NICCI NUNES ’91 “It eased students into atoms and molecules first without ..............
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....................... CHANGE
CATALYST FOR
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an emphasis on whether or not they liked math,” Nunes said. “There was a lot of hands-on experience. They had to look for patterns, come up with ideas and build their own knowledge rather than my telling them things.” A follow-up study to gauge the program’s success revealed the curriculum not only improved every student’s performance but also closed the achievement gap, significantly helping students who normally struggled with chemistry. It also prompted the school to detrack its chemistry classes from four levels to two— AP and regular chemistry. Even more significant for Nunes was the attitude shift among the faculty and students. “It really changed the conversation from ‘who gets it’ to ‘how can we make it so everyone gets it, everyone understands chemistry?’” she said. “Once people see they can do it, you get a lot of mileage from that. I still remem- ber a student telling me, ‘If you showed me this final exam at the beginning of the year, I wouldn’t have believed I could have done all this.’”
“Going through Mudd, you learn how to believe something is possible, that it can happen.”
NICCI NUNES
Having seen what a great teacher and the right curriculum could do for students’ understanding of chemistry, in 2006, Nunes accepted an offer to direct U.C. Berkeley’s CalTeach pro- gram. The statewide initiative helps undergraduates in the UC system obtain a bachelor’s degree in science or mathematics and prepares them to become a secondary-school science or math teacher.
A key accomplishment, she said, was seeing the first class
Disturbed that others viewed the discipline she loved as being either too difficult or dull, Nicci Nunes ’91 became a catalyst for change. She wanted others to embrace—and understand— the beauty and power of chemistry. But first she would have to overcome a few barriers. Her first hurdle happened in graduate school, where she re- sisted the pressure to work in the chemical industry in favor of becoming a teacher. Later, as an educator, she quickly realized the need to transform the chemistry curriculum and student ac- cess to it. She found her opportunity for change in a program called,
“Living by Chemistry,” which was designed to make the subject more accessible to a diverse group without sacrificing content. Its innovative curriculum mirrored her own ideas, so she seized the chance to test it while working at Thurgood Marshall Aca- demic High School in San Francisco.
through to graduation because it created a valued place for stu- dents who, like her, love their studied discipline and want to teach rather than launch a commercial or industrial career. Now that she’s tackled high school and university educational
arenas, Nunes aims to transform science education in elemen- tary schools. She’s left her post at CalTeach and plans to start either a charter school or nonprofit that supports more science programs in the primary grades. Although her passion for chemistry has always fueled her
efforts, her years at HMC were what seeded her potential, she said. “Going through Mudd you learn how to believe something is possible, that it can happen. It made me feel comfortable doing hard things.”
FALL/WINTER 2011 Har vey Mudd College
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