National Service Awards Announced

Three chemistry educators—Glenn and Jane Crosby, retired chemistry educators from Washington State University, and Sister Mary Virginia Orna, a professor of chemistry at the College of New Rochelle, in New York—will receive American Chemical Society national awards in 2009. The Crosbys will receive the Charles Lathrop Parsons Award. Orna will receive the 2009 Award for Volunteer Service to ACS. Both awards consist of $3,000 and a certificate.

The Parsons Award usually goes to an individual, but the board of directors made an exception this year to grant the award to the Crosbys. California Institute of Technology chemistry professor Harry B. Gray and others refer to the Crosbys as "the dynamic duo" for their combined work in chemistry education.

Over the past 60 years, the Crosbys have conceived and implemented chemistry education programs including Operation Progress for high school chemistry teachers and the Cougar Summer Science Camp for 8th and 9th graders. Most recently, they have been working with the ACS Division of Chemical Education to endow 10 regional awards for high school chemistry teachers. One of the stipulations for these awards will be that the winners must have been nominated for the ACS James Bryant Conant Award in High School Chemistry Teaching. The Crosbys both turn 80 this year, and Glenn says, "I suspect that this will be our last big endeavor for ACS."

Orna is being honored for significant contributions to the goals and objectives of ACS. The award will recognize her "unstinting service to the society, its council and committees, the Division of Chemical Education and the Division of the History of Chemistry, her students and colleagues, and humanity."

"My religious community's motto is Serviam—Latin for 'I will serve'—so it's natural that this attitude of service would spill over into my professional and scholarly communities," Orna says. "So many of the ACS goals are congruent with my own personal goals that this award is icing on the cake," she says.