Contextualizing Chemistry in Art and Archaeology: Inspiration for Instructors

About

Kevin L. Braun has been a chemistry instructor since 2007. In 2018 he joined the faculty in the Department of Chemistry at the Virginia Military Institute and teaches courses in general chemistry analytical chemistry and instrumentation. Dr. Braun earned a B.S. in Chemistry and B.A. in Anthropology before obtaining his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona in Dr. Craig Aspinwall''s group. This was followed by a post-doctoral research position with Dr. J. Michael Ramsey at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Throughout his career Dr. Braun has been interested in how context-based programming can improve student performance and enthusiasm from introductory chemistry to advanced topic courses. In 2012 he coauthored the ChemConnections Activity Workbook (W. W. Norton) a collection of fifty-nine activities and laboratories set in context of societally and environmentally relevant issues. In 2020 he again partnered with W.W. Norton to coauthor a context-rich first-ever interactive instructor''s guide for Chemistry: The Science in Context 6th Ed. by Gilbert Kirss Bretz and Foster. Between 2010 and 2016 he organized and co-taught four week-long faculty workshops on teaching chemistry through the lens of renewable energy in the NSF sponsored Chemistry Collaborations Workshops and Community of Scholars (cCWCS) program. Dr. Braun''s research interests include the investigation of ink and pigment degradation in the context of forensic document analysis and archaeological lipid residue analysis. These projects also inform his teaching and have led to the development of context-based undergraduate laboratories on forensic document analysis arsenic screening of taxidermy ethnographic and archaeological collections and lipid residue analysis of archaeological pottery. The latter laboratory was published in the Journal of Chemical Education in 2017. Kristin Jansen Labby is faculty in the Chemistry Department at Beloit College. After undergraduate studies at theUniversity ofWisconsin-Madison she completed her PhD in medicinal chemistry in the lab of Richard B. Silverman at Northwestern University. She continued with postdoctoral research and lecturing at the University of Michigan. She joined the Beloit College Faculty in 2014. Her interests in chemistry and art were fostered by participating in NSF-funded cCWCS Chemistry in Art workshops. In addition to incorporating art and archaeology into the chemistry classroom she works to engage students in antibiotic resistance research and drug discovery as a Tiny Earth Partner Instructor.