Dr. Sterner to Receive Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Teaching of Chemistry

The Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society (NESACS) will present the 2025 James Flack Norris Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Teaching of Chemistry to:

• Dr. Elizabeth Sterner, Professor of Chemistry, Lebanon Valley College, Annville, Pa.
• Dr. Philip J. Costanzo, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Calif.
• Dr. Dominik Konkolewicz, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
  

The Macromolecular Alliance for Community Resources & Outreach (MACRO), a joint service committee of the ACS Divisions of Polymer Chemistry (POLY) and Polymeric Materials: Science & Engineering (PMSE), will be recognized at the upcoming NESACS Awards Banquet on Thursday, November 13, 2025, at Simmons University in Boston, MA. This recognition celebrates MACRO's outstanding achievements in the teaching of chemistry and its deep, sustained impact on the polymer education community.

"I'm deeply grateful to be recognized for my work developing the polymer curriculum resources for MACRO, along with my excellent colleagues and their contributions," share Dr. Elizabeth "Liz" Sterner. "To be able to count myself among scientist-educators who I highly respect is an honor and slightly unreal."

Founded in 2019 by Drs. Elizabeth Sterner, Philip Costanzo, and Dominik Konkolewicz, MACRO has emerged as a national leader in developing freely accessible educational, outreach, and professional development resources for polymer chemists at all career stages. Through their coordinated efforts across Curriculum, Outreach, and Professional Development, MACRO has established a robust portfolio of high-impact initiatives-from modular teaching resources aligned with ACS certification requirements to national symposia, live webinars, and a widely used repository of instructional materials on their website, macro-poly-pmse.org.

"Liz is one of our most dedicated faculty and an outstanding teacher," said Dr. James M. MacLaren, LVC President. "I am thrilled to learn of this well-deserved recognition. Liz has mentored and offered research opportunities for so many students. She exhibits mastery in teaching complicated material in an approachable and understandable manner that is reflected in her students' successes."

MACRO's work is also reaching classrooms across the country. At the Spring 2024 ACS National Meeting in New Orleans, MACRO hosted a dedicated half-day session focused on K-14 education and provided funds to distribute over 100 activity kits to educators, helping bring hands-on science into classrooms. Their website continues to serve as a global resource, with more than 300 unique users in the past year, and much higher traffic during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Their national ACS symposia-now four in total-have featured over 40 oral presentations and brought together educators from K-12 through higher education, private industry, and ACS leadership. These efforts have demonstrated a sustained impact on the polymer science community and are worthy of recognition with the 2025 James Flack Norris Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Teaching of Chemistry.

The James Flack-Norris Award is the first national award to recognize outstanding achievement in the teaching of chemistry. Established in 1950 by NESACS to honor the memory of James Flack Norris, Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a teacher of great repute, the award recognizes dedicated teachers of chemistry at any level whose efforts have had a wide-ranging effect on chemical education. This year's award celebrates these three champions of chemistry education research who have had a significant impact on the advancement of student-centered, active-learning approaches for teaching in the chemical sciences and STEM more broadly.

About Dr. Sterner's Research

Sterner's main research projects include:

• Upcycling food waste, such as fruit peels and shellfish shells, into bioplastics for use in sustainable and safe food packaging and handling.
• Collaborating with conservation scientists at the Winterthur museum, garden, and library to prevent undesirable aging in lacquers that protect metal art objects.
• Seeking to generate new impact-resistant plastics by engineering how polymers vibrate on the molecular level.

For further information on the James Flack Norris Award, contact Lori Ferrins (l.ferrins@northeastern.edu). Additional details will be available on the NESACS website, https://www.nesacs.org.

NESACS has nearly 3,935 members. The mission of the Northeastern Section of the ACS is the advancement of chemistry and chemical engineering, the promotion of research, the improvement of the qualifications of members through high standards of educational and professional ethics, the increase and diffusion of chemical knowledge, and the promotion of scientific interests and inquiry. More information on NESACS initiatives can be found on our website, https://www.nesacs.org.