Sarah Cresswell
About Sarah
Background
I am Deputy Dean Learning and Teaching for Griffith Sciences at Griffith University and was Program Director of the Forensic Science programs from 2011 to 2018.
- I am a Centenary Fellow of the RACI and a member since 2013 and am also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (a member since 1990).
- I am a member of the RACI Queensland Chemical Education Group and served as the Chair from 2015 to 2018.
- I am passionate about championing chemistry to school students and am a CSIRO Scientist in School; a post I’ve held at two schools since 2013. In addition, I provide outreach activities and on-campus forensic science experience days to Year 9 students through Griffith’s Cutting-Edge Science Programs as well as encouraging schools to participate in the RACI Titration Competition.
- As a teaching focussed academic, I teach specialist forensic chemistry courses to later years students and first-year chemistry to science students across all science programs at Griffith which allows me to see students throughout their undergraduate programs. I was awarded the 2017 Griffith University Vice Chancellor’s Teacher of the Year Award in 2017 for innovative teaching.
- I supervise Honours and PhD students and work in collaboration with forensic chemistry laboratories across Australia and with colleagues at Griffith.
RACI Direction as I see it
- I am passionate in the belief that making the chemical sciences accessible to school age students is fundamental to the future of the RACI. Demonstrating to school students the exciting nature of chemical research and application is vital to maintaining our future. Our current members are key to this endeavour and if we can leverage the skills of our members to pass on their knowledge to our younger scientists, we can create a virtuous cycle of knowledge transmission.
- Encouraging new undergraduates to join the RACI is important but equally, if not more so, is creating a culture whereby new undergraduate students actively seek to join us because they can easily see how such membership can benefit them. I believe we can achieve this with an increased presence in schools and by an increased interaction with schoolteachers and undergraduate students. To this end, involving our newly graduated chemists is key.
- Actively encouraging the younger members of the RACI in its governance and direction is also important to our future. Their views on how the RACI can support them and how they can give back to the RACI would add an important dimension to the Board. I also believe they have a strong role to play in the continuing accreditation of University programs of study and provide another perspective to this important aspect of the RACI’s role.
- As a researcher in an applied chemistry field, the need to broaden the reach of the RACI to continue to embrace both fundamental and applied research is necessary and collaboration with other applied science organisations would be key. Increasing industry connectiveness to the RACI could be possible by leveraging member connections and as a member of the Australian and New Zealand Forensic Science Society, and a committee member of the Queensland Branch, this is something I would be able to contribute to.
- I see the RACI continuing to champion the positive impact of chemistry to the public, educational sector, industry, and government and will endeavour to ensure all stakeholders are included in this.