Dr. Colleen Kelley

Dr. Amy Graham talks with educator and TA mentor, Dr. Colleen Kelley about her path to academia as a first generation college student and how that has shaped her teaching. Dr. Kelley shares some best practices for teaching, grading, strategies to diminish anxiety in the classroom, and the benefits of observing other educators.

Dr. Colleen Kelley is the Creator and Founder of Kids’ Chemical Solutions (www.kidschemicalsolutions.com) which is a comic-book based chemistry curriculum intended for kids ages 8 – 108. Her journey as a chemist began at The University of Richmond where she received her B.S. in Chemistry. She fell in love with the world of discovery and research and wanted to continue to explore more chemistry. She headed to Penn State University and dashed through graduate school receiving her Ph.D. in chemistry at the age of 24. She was having so much fun doing chemistry research that she accepted a Chateaubriand Postdoctoral Fellowship in Strasbourg, France with Nobel Prize winner Jean-Marie Lehn.

Colleen was a first-generation college student who kept following her flow of having fun doing chemistry research. Fast forward 30 years later to the tail-end of her career teaching chemistry in higher education, Colleen finds herself captivated by the question, “Why do my students think chemistry is SO hard?” Dr. Kelley now conducts her research in Chemical Education to uncover this mystery. What she has discovered is that learning chemistry is very much like learning music. Both disciplines are dependent on the interpretation of symbols and the development of fluency with these symbols. We know that the best time to learn music is between ages 6 – 10 when the brain has the plasticity to make the neural connections necessary. We NOW know, through Dr. Kelley’s research, that this is also the best time to learn chemistry.

Dr. Kelley is now teaching in 4th and 5th grade classrooms in Arizona using her chemistry comic book series. The kids are excited and embracing learning through this platform. What’s next? “My WHY is to make learning chemistry fun, accessible, and inclusive so that it becomes a 'normal’ part of a child’s education.”