The Department of Chemistry was thrilled to hear that alumna Jennifer Howell was the recipient of the 2025 Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence in STEM, for her work teaching science to grades 8-12 at Elmwood School in Ottawa.
“Jenny not only teaches chemistry; she fosters a love for learning, a curiosity about science, and the confidence for students—particularly girls—to envision themselves as future leaders in scientific fields,” said the Director of Success for the Elmwood School in comments included in the 2025 awards announcement.
Chemistry Stories reached out to Howell, who graduated in 2011 with a Master’s Degree after studying in the Lautens Group, to share the story of her pursuit of chemistry and her career in teaching today.
Let’s get the ball rolling with a short bio. Tell us a little about your journey to now.
I have always been interested in science since I was a child. I have fond memories of attending “Engineering Science Quest” summer camp in elementary school, where I was introduced to making slime, Lego robotics, and liquid nitrogen ice cream.
In high school I pursued all the available science courses, then attended the University of Guelph for an undergraduate degree in Honours Chemistry. While at Guelph, I had co-op placements both in industry and in academic labs in a range of disciplines from organic synthesis to computational chemistry. With the immense support of my supervisors, as well as lots of luck in the lab, research from my time at Guelph was eventually published in 5 peer-reviewed journal articles.
While I loved learning about chemistry, I was still quite unsure of where my career path would take me. I enrolled at the University of Toronto for graduate school under the supervision of Professor Mark Lautens, and was exceptionally fortunate to be surrounded by amazing Ph.D. and Post-Doc mentors. While my research on carbohalogenation for C-H activation was successful by all accounts, when I had a moment away from the bench I found myself totally engrossed in reading articles from the Journal of Chemical Education. When I finally had the opportunity to TA, working with students in the lab became the highlight of my week. After 12 months of research, a JACS publication, and lots of soul-searching, I wrapped up my time in the lab and wrote my Masters’ thesis.
I pursued any opportunity that brought me closer to teaching: I took Teaching Assistant contracts, tutored undergraduate chemistry, worked as a Laboratory Technician at UTM, taught OChem MCAT preparatory classes, and applied to Teacher’s College.
I had assumed that I wouldn’t like teaching high school as much as I did undergraduate students, but it turns out I was wrong! There are many similarities between first year undergraduate students and those entering high school: students are in a period of big life changes, hungry for new challenges, and looking for support and guidance to achieve their goals.
I have spent twelve years teaching grade 7-10 science and grade 11-12 chemistry in Peterborough, Toronto, and for the past six years have been at Elmwood School in Ottawa, which is an all-girls International Baccalaureate continuum school with students from pre-K to grade 12. In addition to teaching I work as an academic coach and run a STEM club for high school students. I also had the opportunity to help design our chemistry lab space, which underwent major renovations in 2022.
The Prime Minister's Awards for Teaching Excellence honour elementary and secondary school teachers for achievements in education and commitment to preparing their students for a digital and innovation-based economy. How does this apply to a contemporary classroom for students from grades 8-12?
Learning is so different for today’s youth compared to when I was in school. Accessibility of information means that with enough time and dedication, there are no limits to what you can learn. High school students can attend university lectures at Ivy League schools through online platforms like Coursera and EdX, they can learn about groundbreaking technologies from Youtube videos, or they can have a generative AI tutor walk them through a stoichiometry problem.
Because students don’t need to be in a traditional school environment to learn, I spend a lot of time thinking about the added value I can provide in a classroom setting. Like many science teachers, I focus on hands-on activities, group discussions, connecting science content to real-world applications, and the use of tangible models and analogies.
What I feel is missing from the curriculum is explicit instruction on learning strategies that are applicable across disciplines: active recall, spaced repetition, interleaving, the importance of sleep, and organizational strategies to name a few. I explicitly teach these concepts throughout my chemistry courses and encourage students to try different studying methods to see what will serve them best in their learning. While most of my students won’t go on to study chemistry, they do remember my lesson on multiple choice strategy for standardized tests.
Your 2025 Recipient Biography talks about your use of Universal Design to ensure that every student feels supported and challenged.” What does this mean?
In the same way that building a ramp alongside a staircase allows greater accessibility to a physical building, there are tools that can be used to help more learners access content.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for educators to reflect on ways to support all students’ success in a learning environment. This can include making glossaries of key terms to support English Language Learners, offering scaffolded assignments to students who struggle with executive functioning skills, providing opportunities for oral assessments instead of only written assessments, or providing accessible technologies for a student with a reading or writing disability. And it turns out that while these tools are designed with a specific learner in mind, most students can benefit from the same resources.
Chemistry content is challenging, and over the course of my career I have had many students tell me they “just don’t get science/math,” with the vast majority of these students being girls. It is my belief that anyone can see success in science if they are committed to putting in the effort and they have access to the right supports. Students often need help unpacking where their personal challenges lie and identifying tools they can try to improve their learning process.
Over the past 3 years in addition to teaching chemistry, I have worked as an academic coach. In this role I am partnered with students who have individualized education plans (IEPs) for additional support in executive functioning skills including organization, task initiation, and time management. We meet on a weekly basis across an academic year to develop learning strategies that suit their individualized needs. I have brought a lot of what I learned through this work into my own classroom to elevate everyone’s learning practice and to help make chemistry accessible to all my students.
Can you tell us more about VSEPR Yoga?
In grade 12, students learn about VSEPR and molecules with up to 6 electron domains. Students can find it challenging to remember the bond angles, electron domain geometries, and the names of the molecular shapes. After exploring these structures using playdoh and toothpicks, we use our bodies to make these shapes through a VSEPR Yoga session. Having students experience this information in many different forms (theory, simulations, manipulatives, and then through movement) is a great way to improve retention of the concept. Once you have personally contorted into a tetrahedral methane molecule, it’s easier to remember that the bond angle is 109.5o.
You also created a Women in STEM learning series, reflecting another side of a deep commitment to making science accessible to everyone. Can you say more about that?
Throughout my career I have been a passionate advocate for encouraging girls to pursue careers in STEM fields. Working at an all-girls school has been my dream come true and allows me to share my personal experiences as a woman in STEM and to provide guidance and encouragement to my students who are considering STEM career paths. Within the Elmwood School community, we have displays of female STEM professionals and we celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on February 11th each year. I have also integrated opportunities for students to learn about scientists from a wide variety of identities and backgrounds into my courses.
For example, one grade 12 project has students interview a woman in a STEM career field of their own interest. These students are at a pivotal point in their education and while many aspire to be doctors, lawyers, or engineers, most don’t have a good understanding of what the day-to-day looks like for that career. What does an entry level position look like? What are some of the biggest challenges in this job? What are the experiences like for women in this industry?
In addition to gaining this valuable insight, a side benefit is that students also learn networking skills, including scheduling an informational interview, determining what types of questions to ask, and writing a follow-up thank you email. We also watch the documentary Picture a Scientist at the end of grade 12 and talk about the experiences of women in male-dominated career fields. This leads us to a discussion about science-based affinity groups that students can join at their future post-secondary institution.
What does winning this award mean to you?
When I first started out as a high school teacher, I was fortunate to work with incredible colleagues, some of whom had also won the Prime Minister’s Teaching Award. Working alongside these educators taught me so much about how to be an amazing teacher, including strategies I still use in my classroom every day.
Being honoured with this award feels like a full-circle moment, but I want to acknowledge that there are many, many teachers out there doing amazing work who have not been recognized. This award has helped me to reflect on the next chapter of my career, where I have the opportunity to give back and become a mentor to the next generation of teachers.
I would also like to extend my sincere gratitude to Dr. Mark Lautens from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Toronto, and Dr. William Tam from the Department of Computational, Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Guelph for their significant support and guidance throughout my academic journey. The experience I gained in their labs has been invaluable to my own understanding of the discipline of chemistry and provides me with a wide range of anecdotes that enrich my science teaching.
It is my belief that anyone can see success in science if they are committed to putting in the effort and they have access to the right supports. --Jennifer Howell