The Theodore William Richards Award for Excellence in Teaching Secondary School Chemistry is intended to honor a teacher in the Northeastern Section who, through innovation and dedication, has inspired potential chemists, has communicated chemistry to non-chemists, or has influenced other teachers of chemistry.

Coinciding with this Section's High School Night ceremony in May, the selected teacher will be officially honored and will receive both a $1,500 prize and a Certificate of Recognition.

Anyone, including a prospective awardee, may make a nomination. Colleagues, department heads, principals, students, and former students are urged to consider the criteria upon which the Section will base its selection and to submit the name of a deserving individual.

The criteria for excellence correspond broadly to the effectiveness with which the teacher conveys the principles of chemistry to students and to the influence that the teacher has had on students and on other teachers.

The teacher's effectiveness could be a direct result of innovative and exciting techniques used to help students comprehend and remember chemical concepts and descriptive material. It could be a result of the special effort and dedication that characterizes his or her interaction with students, both academic and extra-curricular. It could also be a result of a particular skill in communicating, especially to students not intending to become chemists, the role chemistry plays in their lives and in society.

The influence of the teacher could be reflected in the way he or she inspires the students or promotes the better teaching of chemistry among other teachers. The influence might have led to students choosing chemistry as a career or might have prompted students to choose an appropriate scientific specialty. It might also have led to other teachers learning to use, through workshops or written material, successful new approaches taken by the nominee to demonstrate laboratory experiments or to solve chemical problems.

The measure of such effectiveness and influence could be reflected in the achievements of his or her students or of students of other teachers who have learned from him or her. It is assumed that many students fortunate enough to have learned chemistry from this teacher could win awards of their own and would go on to become chemists. Such students might have placed high in the Chemistry Olympiad, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, the Avery Ashdown High School Examination, science fairs, etc. These achievements might very well be more significant than the basic abilities of the student would suggest.