James P. Shoffner of Elk Grove Village, Ill., will be honored April 9 by the world’s largest scientific society for bringing opportunities to young people, particularly those in the inner city, to experience chemistry and a research career. He will receive the 2002 Award for Encouraging Disadvantaged Students into Careers in the Chemical Sciences from the American Chemical Society at its national meeting in Orlando, Fla.
“The reason I work with young people is to give them the opportunity to make choices,” said Shoffner, an organic chemist who retired in 1993 from Allied Signal/UOP but still teaches at Columbia College. One of the first initiatives he led became Project SEED, which placed youths in summer jobs with laboratories. He also tries to link students with role models as well as provide them opportunities to visit research facilities and to talk with scientists.
“All this speaks to empowering young people. It’s a means of giving them the power to further their own lives, to maximize their own potential,” explained Shoffner. “By the time they find that power on their own, opportunities are often closed because they haven’t taken the proper courses that would qualify them to study chemistry or any other science later.”
Often the hurdles are logistical as well as philosophical, he noted. “One of the problems is that most live quite a distance from where jobs are located. Transportation became a serious issue, so one of the first things we had to do was to provide some means to get there.”
Nevertheless, Project SEED has given summer laboratory experience to over 6,000 disadvantaged students since its inception in 1968. Another venture in which Shoffner’s work has been key is the ACS Minority Scholars Program, which has given scholarships to 1,100 minority students majoring in college chemistry or chemical engineering.
Shoffner’s own mentors were undergraduate professors, who looked out for “a kind of insecure young man from a very small town who needed some reassurance,” he said. “It was a great inspiration that somebody cared that much.”
He received his undergraduate degree from Lincoln University in 1951 and his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Chicago, in 1965. Shoffner is a member of the ACS organic, petroleum, professional relations, and industrial and engineering chemistry divisions.
The ACS Award for Encouraging Disadvantaged Students into Careers in the Chemical Sciences is sponsored by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc.