It started with a simple idea as they were driving home from the 2015 competition: Bryn Mawr’s Chemathon team would stand a better chance of finishing in the top five if they had more time to prepare.

 

For the past 15 years, Bryn Mawr has fielded a team for the Chemathon, which takes place every spring at the University of Maryland. As the name suggests, the Chemathon is a series of chemistry events – with names like Hydronium Hijinks, Mendeleev Madness and Viscoelastic Bounce – in which teams compete, compiling points in the hopes of winning a grand prize. Over the years, Bryn Mawr’s results have been good; an entire wall of Upper School Chemistry teacher Lee Kladky’s room is dedicated to the certificates of achievements that Chemathon teams have earned over the last decade. However, the team had not won the overall prize since 2005.

 

Days after the 2015 competition, three of the then-team members – Sherrie Shen ’17, Jiamin Wang ’17 and Rachel Yan ’17 – decided to find a way to give future teams the gift they felt they had most needed: time. By forming a club that met every week throughout the year, the girls knew that they would be able to impart a great deal of knowledge to new Chemathon competitors. “[Events like] Chemical Jeopardy and Mendeleev Madness require you to have a huge knowledge about elements and a solubility chart, and I don’t think this is something you can memorize within three weeks,” Yan said at the time. “By starting a Chemathon Club we can play games with all of the elements and properties, and people can learn not just for the contest, but for their lives.”

 

In addition, says Wang, the club leaders made some strategic decisions. “Our goal was to train the students ahead of time and make sure they were good in certain events. Since it is a decathlon, we focused on training them in the events we believe they should at least place in the top five.”

Auchincloss was ecstatic when she learned that she was one of two recipients of the award, and she knew that it would make all the difference for the students at the Baer School. After meeting with the school’s teachers, technical liaison and leadership, Auchincloss created a plan to implement iPads and other assistive technology in the classroom. This process involved figuring out which technology and apps would work best and coming up with a learning plan for each individual student based on their abilities. It also involved providing training for teachers and getting the technology approved by the Baltimore City Public School System.

On December 12, 2017, Auchincloss launched her project at the Baer School, and demonstrated the new technology to visitors, including Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh. In her remarks, Mayor Pugh thanked Gabby for her service project and said, “If young people around our city took initiative like this, imagine how great our schools would be...how great our city would be...and how great the future for young people would be.”

The new technology that Auchincloss and the team at Baer implemented is helping teachers and their students communicate in ways that were not possible before, such as allowing those who cannot speak to communicate and interact during class through technology on their iPads.

Auchincloss described the joy she felt watching one of the students, who speaks Spanish at home and is learning English, use the new technology to learn phrases and communicate with others in the classroom. “I’ll never forget the smile she had on her face,” said Auchincloss.

Her project was designed to help the students at the Baer school, but Auchincloss says it also taught her a lot about herself. “The greatest lesson I have learned is that if you truly commit to something, no matter how small, you can make a meaningful impact in others’ lives,” Auchincloss said.