In the period of 23rd October 2021 to 30th November 2021, the American Chemical Society UTM International Student Chapter held The Scientists in Society: Poster and Video Contest, an online competition-based program. This contest was themed “Scientist of All Time: Contributions in Chemistry” and it was opened to all the undergraduates around Malaysia.
The objectives of this event were to enhance the interest of students in Chemistry by increasing their exposure to the development of Chemistry. Besides, expose the students to a wider range of Chemistry knowledge and allow them to understand the knowledge behind scientists’ contribution as well as to relate it with real life situations.
In this program, there were two competitions: poster contests and video contests. The poster contest only involved individual participants, while individual and group categories were for the video contest. There were 34 and 11 undergraduates in poster and video contests, respectively. The participants were from several universities in Malaysia with different professions such as Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Asia Metropolitan University, HELP University, MAHSA University and Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) As mentioned above, the participants were from different backgrounds including science, engineering, medicine, psychology, management, computer network & security and liberal studies.
Two lecturers from the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, UTM, Dr. Khairil Juhanni Binti Abd Karim and Associate Professor Dr. Roswanira Binti Ab. Wahab were invited to be the honourable judges for both contests. The winners were announced on the 30th of November. All the winners and participants were given certificates.
In a nutshell, the online competition-based program was a major success as it had effectively ignited the students’ interest in Chemistry despite coming from various educational backgrounds. This program also had given us an insight into the appreciation and learning process of undergraduates all around Malaysia. Most importantly, they had related the knowledge with real-life application in their final product. It is hoped that their efforts in this competition will benefit them, not only from the knowledge but also the way to approach knowledge. As Dr Martin H. Fischer said, “All the world is a laboratory to the inquiring mind”. Hence, ACS UTM International Student Chapter hoped that the participants would look for continuous knowledge either from the contributions of scientists or surrounding in the future.
