SMACS gives food to community

 Student Members of the American Chemical Society is a highly awarded organization that believes in giving back to the community.

SMACS is an organization that is highly prized on this campus for its efforts to increase awareness in Green Chemistry. They have also received more national awards than any of the other 1,000 national chapters.

SMACS is partnering with the Backpack Program to give hungry children in the community meals. The Backpack Program is a program that benefits the children of Weakley County. Their mission is to provide nutritional meals for students to take home. The child is anonymously given the food on Friday so that they can have the food over the weekend.

SMACS saw this as an opportunity to give back while also filling a problem in the Chemistry department. Students know that to enter the Chemistry lab they must wear safety glasses, but many students forget them or lose them. SMACS, which is also is involved in a canned food drive during Homecoming week, decided to do a sort of canned food drive in the Spring semester as well as a way to meet both needs. Students donate either a dollar or a can of food and they can use a pair of safety glasses for their class. The can then fills up a period chart after it has been labeled with a chemical. The cans collected are pop-top cans, which each child can easily use.

Stephanie Gourley, the Director of the canned food drive, is in charge of sterilizing the glasses after each student uses them to maintain a healthy environment. They use a UV light to sterilize each of their safety glasses before the next student uses them.

Elizabeth Devliger, the president of SMACS, a senior Chemistry major from Portland, Tenn. wants more awareness of what they are doing in the community and on campus as well as participation from fellow students. She wants people to know that they can donate money, cans or glasses to them, which will benefit their attempts to aid the hungry children in the area.

Many students buy glasses for classes and end up throwing them away or losing them, instead Devliger urges you to donate them to SMACS, to keep their charitable attempts a possibility.

On Jan. 18, SMACS successfully raised 108 cans to donate to the Backpack Program.

For anyone interested in donating to the Backpack Program, contact Jake Bynum at 731-514-0594. It costs roughly $5 per week per child or $200 to feed a child for the entire year. Donations can be sent to P.O. Box 196 Dresden, TN 38225 or dropped off at any First State Bank location.

If anyone is interested in becoming a member of SMACS or about their contributions to the Backpack Program, contact Elizabeth Devliger at eliadevl@ ut.utm.edu or their advisor Dr. S.K. Airee at skairee@utm.edu.