Patricia Redden wins 2025 Award for Volunteer Service to ACS

Patricia Redden is the recipient of the 2025 Award for Volunteer Service to the American Chemical Society. She is being honored for more than 45 years of service to chemical safety, chemists with disabilities, and public outreach. This award was established in 2001 to recognize individual volunteers who have contributed significantly to the society’s goals and objectives.

Redden joined ACS in 1965 while studying for a PhD at Fordham University. She became a professor at Saint Peter’s University in 1968 and soon after began attending meetings of the Hudson-Bergen Subsection of the New York Local Section. By 1977, she was ready to become a volunteer.

Her first role was to establish a safety committee for the New York Local Section, an idea sparked by two minor incidents in her own lab. The committee visited colleges and high schools throughout the region giving safety talks and conducting safety inspections of laboratories and stockrooms. “That was the start of that thread, which really became a major part of my work at ACS,” Redden says. She went on to chair the Division of Chemical Health and Safety. She later served for over a decade on the Committee on Chemical Safety, where her input included pioneering the use of videos in school safety training and contributing to key publications, including the 2016 Guidelines for Chemical Laboratory Safety in Secondary Schools.

Another major thread of Redden’s work within ACS is supporting chemists with disabilities. As a longtime member of the Committee of Chemists with Disabilities, her contributions include acting as guiding editor for the 2023 edition of Teaching Chemistry to Students with Disabilities. Her passion for and knowledge about supporting students with disabilities came from raising her two daughters, adopted from India, who had become paraplegic after contracting polio. Her work in this field includes advising on how service dogs can be taken into laboratories safely. Redden has raised 10 service dog puppies.

Redden has also made a major contribution to public outreach and education—something she became interested in after visiting her nephew’s kindergarten class. In 1986, she initiated the first event for children and adults sponsored by the New York Local Section, with hands-on exhibits and science shows. The meeting, which took place at the American Museum of Natural History, was one of the first steps toward National Chemistry Week. Redden expanded and led the annual event at the museum until 1997 and was a long-standing member of the ACS Committee on Chemical Education.

“Pat has consistently been ahead of her time; she reminds me of the Barbara Mandrell song ‘I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool’ because she boldly followed her muse into areas to create innovative programs long before the rest of us realized their critical importance,” says Brian R. Gibney, interim dean for the sciences at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and treasurer of the New York Local Section.

In 2011, Redden was recognized as an ACS fellow for her volunteer work. Her additional contributions include serving on other national committees, supporting initiatives at the regional level, and taking on numerous local leadership roles. She cites enjoyment, friendships, and regular opportunities to feel a sense of accomplishment as the greatest benefits of volunteering with ACS. “The friendships I’ve made over the 30 years or more I’ve been involved in national committees—and even longer locally—are great,” she says. “I go to a meeting and I’ve got friends there from all over the country."