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Chemistry Project team
The 2004 chemistry project team.
Participants
Two very concentrated participants doing experiments.
School Partnership in the Rheinmünster Community
In July 2004, the secondary school in Rheinmünster celebrated its 40th anniversary with a huge school open day, a colorful exhibition and numerous other activities. The school was founded in 1964, to provide comprehensive education in the region, and has today almost 500 pupils from the surrounding area.

Since 1986, the school and Dow have fostered contacts that have become ever closer. This has recently been demonstrated by Dow sponsoring the school’s commemorative publication as well as by the Dow training manager’s visiting the school twice a year. Every January he attends the “Job Exchange” at the school and on a second visit he talks to pupils in classes about careers and opportunities for plant and lab technicians with Dow. The school has recently introduced a new course called “Combined Sciences;” its curriculum combines biology, physics and chemistry, and Dow Rhine Center is helping by providing practical teaching material.

A particular highlight of this cooperation is “the Chemistry Project,” as it has become known. This May, for the 13th time, sixteen boys and girls from Year 9 were invited to visit Dow’s Training Laboratory at the Rheinmünster site. With the focus on useful demonstration they gained practical experience of an area of analytical chemistry. The project also provides information about safety, laboratory conditions, safe handling and environmentally friendly disposal of chemicals. Those taking part in the project gained a more in-depth insight into the training and role of a chemistry lab technician. The commemorative publication featured the chemistry project in detail, “The project simultaneously changes attitudes towards the chemical industry and influences awareness of the hazard potential of chemistry. Emotional discussions, often fuelled by ignorance, are made more objective by well-founded knowledge.”

Everyone benefits from this cooperation and it has even been mooted that pupils, who take part in the chemistry project, should be offered a training place at the Rhine Center. More than 20 Dow employees have already discovered that Dow is the company of their choice thanks to the chemistry project.