According to department chairperson Jennifer Marlow, the science department does not have any major events or competitions coming up until second semester. She said students will mainly be signing up for the Biology, Chemistry and Physics Olympiad exams that will occur in the spring.

Also, as scheduling continues, Marlow said the department hopes to get the grant for the Project Lead the Way course Principles of Biomedical Sciences to make that available for students in the coming year.

Teachers are also looking at budgets and equipment requests for the next year, as the requests are due early in December. Also, Marlow said the department discussed the databases available to them on the CHS and Carmel Clay Public Library websites, trying to incorporate them more into classes.

“Not as many (teachers use them) as we would like yet, but a lot of us weren’t familiar with it or didn’t realize how much access we have, so I think teachers will use more and more databases,” Marlow said.

Marlow also said chemistry teacher Timothy Mylin will retire at the end of first semester, so there will be a new teacher second semester. She said the department has made a recommendation, but it has not yet been finalized by the central office.

The new courses, Materials Chemistry and AP Physics 1, have also been going well. Marlow said she observed the Materials Chemistry class recently and was very impressed by the labs and appreciates the feedback from the students. Junior Dorothy Vincent, who takes AP Physics 1, said she planned to take AP Physics B before the College Board made the switch; however, she said the pace of the new class is much better.

“(My teacher) has enough time now to even take, if she sees us struggling on a chapter, she gives us an extra day to just have a workday in class to go over like we did for the last chapter, and she talks about how last year she wasn’t able to do that. I remember we were on Chapter 2 at a certain time, and she was like, ‘oh at this time in the old way the class was, we were on Chapter 5 or 6.’ So yeah, it helps,” Vincent said.