LANCASTER, Pa. — Richard "Rick" Moog, professor of chemistry at Franklin & Marshall College and Founder/ Director of The POGIL Project in Lancaster, Pa., has been named the 2016 winner of the George C. Pimentel Award in Chemical Education from the American Chemical Society and Cengage Learning. The honor is awarded each year for outstanding contributions to chemical education considered in its broadest meaning, including the training of professional chemists; the dissemination of reliable information about chemistry to prospective chemists, members of the profession, students in other fields, and the general public; and the integration of chemistry into the educational system.   Moog becomes the fifth "POGIL-er" to earn the award since 2005 and the third F&M faculty member so honored (James Spencer, also a co-founder of The POGIL Project, earned the award in 2005 and Conrad Stanitski won in 2013.) 

The Pimentel Award has been awarded since 1952 and previous recipients include Nobel Laureates Linus Pauling, Glenn Seaborg, and Roald Hoffmann.

Moog received an A.B. in Chemistry from Williams College and Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Stanford University. At F&M since 1986, he regularly teaches courses in general chemistry and physical chemistry, where he has used a student-centered, guided inquiry instructional approach for over 20 years. In 1994, Moog was the principal investigator for the U.S. Department of Education–funded Middle Atlantic Discovery Chemistry Project (MADCP) and served as the leader of that organization for many years. He was also the lead P.I. for two large National Science Foundation grants that established and expanded The POGIL Project from 2003 to 2011. With F&M colleague John Farrell, he authored the collection of POGIL activities for general chemistry, Chemistry: A Guided Inquiry, which is now in its 6th edition. He is also the co-author, with John Farrell and Jim Spencer, of two collections of POGIL activities for physical chemistry: Physical Chemistry: A Guided Inquiry: Thermodynamics and Physical Chemistry: A Guided Inquiry: Atoms, Molecules, and Spectroscopy.  In addition, he has developed guided inquiry experiments for use in the general chemistry laboratory. He has organized numerous symposia at national ACS and BCCE meetings concerning POGIL (and active learning more generally) throughout the chemistry curriculum, and has given dozens of presentations, posters, and workshops on POGIL. He is also coauthor of several journal articles and book chapters and the coeditor of the ACS Symposium Series volume: Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning.

Earlier this year, Moog was part of a trio of professors, including chemistry colleague Spencer (retired) and Washington College professor Frank Creegan (also retired) who represented The POGIL Project as recipients of the James Flack Norris Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Teaching of Chemistry, which pays tribute to outstanding contributions to the field of chemical education.

The POGIL Project, which launched as a non-profit organization in 2012 works with educators to disseminate its unique pedagogy at the secondary and college levels through professional development workshops around the world, as well as the production of POGIL curricular materials for both high school and university classrooms.