Sara Helmus Email and Phone Number

Faculty responsibilities include teaching lecture and lab for Fundamentals of Chemistry, General Chemistry I, and General Chemistry II. Class time consists of a mix of active learning and traditional lecture. Lab time is inquiry-based through labs written within the department or from the required lab manual. In regards to service, I am the Vice Chair of the Faculty Assembly. I am also a member of the assessment committee, ILEA (Illinois Equity in Attainment) committee, the Women's Empowerment Committee, and the college council. I am co-advisor of the STEM Club and I am the STEM co-coordinator for the Skyway STEM research poster competition.As the MC-SUCCESS STEM Grant Program Coordinator, my responsibilities include the day-to-day management of our Department of Education Title III grant ($2.2 million) project goals, serving as the PI and project point of contact, completing project reports, developing and distributing outreach information, scheduling activities, budget management, and coordinating peer tutor recruitment and training. I also serve as PI for an NSF-LSAMP subrecipient grant with Chicago State University focused on using undergraduate research and peer tutoring opportunities to increase minority persistence in STEM.

I taught lecture and lab for the General Chemistry sequence as well as the Concepts of Chemistry course for nonmajors.

In the 2009-2010 school year, I taught two sections of general chemistry I and two sections of general chemistry II along with the corresponding laboratories. In the 2010-2011 school year, I had the same teaching responsibilities as the previous year as well as a chemistry for non-majors lecture and lab each semester. I also attended faculty meetings to expand my knowledge of how a department is run.

My teaching responsibilities included one general chemistry I laboratory section in the fall and one general chemistry II laboratory section in the spring.

I finished my Ph.D. in physical chemistry under the guidance of Professor Anne B. McCoy. My research focused on the theoretical investigations of weakly-bound complexes in both spectroscopy and dynamics.

I am in charge of taking minutes at the executive and delegate meetings. I also work to keep the documents presented and passed by the delegate body up-to-date in order to further the goals of the organization.