Students and student organizations are central to the Chemistry community at U of T. Among the many vibrant and active organizations at the Department, two key groups, ChemClub and the Chemistry Student Union (CSU), play an especially vital role in building connections among students and faculty. Each year their dedicated student volunteers work to create professional development opportunities, invite speakers, fundraise, organize conferences, and provide a chance to relax between exams and lab sessions.
Chemistry Stories asked both organizations to share a little about their activities in 2024-2025—from organizational changes and study sessions to social highlights and new projects. Here’s what they told us:
CSU
The Chemistry Student Union (CSU) is a University of Toronto student union that represents the interests of all undergraduate students who take courses offered by the Department of Chemistry.
Alicia Kalendjian, CSU Secretary, writes: The Chemistry Students’ Union (CSU) has had an incredible year, and we’re so grateful to have shared it with our amazing community! As the voice for all undergraduate students taking Chemistry courses at U of T, we’ve worked hard to bring people together, whether through academics, social events, or just creating spaces to connect!
This year, we kicked things off with a coffee chat featuring a variety of professors including Haissi Cui, Jik Chin, and Ronald Kluger, giving students a chance to chat with faculty in a relaxed setting and learn more about their work. We organized fun social events like pub nights, trivia nights, and a game night; the perfect opportunities to take a break from studying and hang out with fellow chemists.
Speaking of studying, we know how hectic midterms and finals can get, so we teamed up with Madeleine Gerbig and the Chemistry Library to host study sessions, helping students prepare in a supportive environment.
Now, to wrap up the year, we’re beyond excited to launch our first-ever conference, the Endless Possibilities in Chemistry (E.P.I.C) Conference—an event designed to inspire, connect, and ignite your passion for chemistry!
E.P.I.C. will include
Engaging Poster Presentations by undergraduate students
Insightful Talks from Professors
Dynamic Workshops to boost your academic and professional skills
Guest Speakers from various Industries sharing real-world insights
Networking Opportunities with peers, researchers, and industry professionals
And dinner will be provided too!
We hope this year has been as memorable for you as it has been for us. Thanks for being part of the CSU community. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for the next council!
ChemClub
The Chemistry Graduate Student Union (CGSU), otherwise known as ChemClub, is a student organization that seeks to represent the interests of chemistry graduate students at the University of Toronto. In addition to hosting social, arts & cultural, and professional development events throughout the year, we maintain a list of chemistry tutors and operate the ChemClub store located in the Lash Miller Chemical Laboratories building, which serves as a one-stop shop for undergraduate lab materials.
Sam Dudra, Chemclub’s current president, tells us:
The past year has certainly been a big one for ChemClub! From socials to professional development events, our calendar was packed full with many fun and engaging events.
Most of this year’s ChemClub executive team was elected in May 2024 and many executive members from the 2023-2024 team returned to the same role or transitioned to new roles including Sam Dudra (President), Colton Johnson (Secretary), Matthew Zambri (Treasurer), Andrew Durant (Internal Events Coordinator), Olivia Driessen (External Events Coordinator), Maria Botero (UTM Representative), Isla Wrightson (UTSC Representative), and Katrina Ruzicka (GSU Representative). We had Ben Chiu join our team as the Stores Manager, and Sam Nyandwi join as our Professional Development Coordinator.
In the fall, we not only had elections for our Executive-at-Large positions, and we amended our constitution to add two new Executive-at-Large positions, one for UTM and one for UTSC Alex Corapi and Marc Zambri joined as our U.T.S.G. Executives-at-Large and we were thrilled to have Fatimah Hashmi and Katrina Steiner join as our inaugural U.T.M. and U.T.S.C. Executives-at-Large respectively.
In the summer, we saw the return of some familiar events as well as a new one. ChemClub went to go cheer on the Toronto Blue Jays as they faced off (and won!) against the Cincinnati Reds. At the end of the summer, we held out annual staff appreciation barbeque which drew a huge crowd of both students and staff members. Our biweekly donuts continued through the summer and in addition, we started a new event called Freezie Friday across all three campuses where we offered freezies every other Friday, offsetting donuts.
When September started and the academic year picked up, our ChemClub stores opened for three weeks. Here, the ChemClub team alongside numerous grad student and undergraduate volunteers sold lab manuals and notebooks, personal protective equipment and more... in over 2250 transactions! The money we made from the ChemClub stores makes up the majority of our budget and continues to allow us to hold all our events and support our chemistry community. With these funds, we were also able to help support student societies such as the Green Chemistry Initiative, Working towards Inclusivity in Chemistry – Toronto, and the Chemistry Student Union, and sponsor events such as Biological Chemistry Days and the Quebec/Ontario Mini-Symposium for Synthetic and Bioorganic Chemistry.
As the fall semester continued, ChemClub held a variety of social events across all three campuses. On the St. George campus, we held events such as Paint & Sip, trivia night, a pumpkin carving and costume contest for Halloween, bouldering, a board games night, and monthly pub nights at the GSU pub. At U.T.M., there were events such as pottery painting, a board games night and the Reindeer Games, which were a part of Chemical and Physical Sciences Graduate Student Association’s Winter Week. At U.T.S.C., there was a lab coat tie dye, pub night and a board games night. To close out 2024, we had our annual holiday at the Drake Hotel. There, we had over 150 people celebrating the end of the year.
In 2025, our events have continued in full force. We hosted our first student invited speaker in years, Dr. Richard Liu from Harvard University. Dr. Liu gave a fantastic talk and there were lots of great discussions with him.
At the downtown campus, ChemClub went skating at Nathan Phillips Square, and watched a Toronto Marlies Hockey game. We also to watch a candlelight concert featuring Taylor Swift’s music, and went to the musical, Just for One Day, which is about the famous Live Aid concert. At UTM, ChemClub went to Dave & Buster’s and had a blast playing games. At UTSC, ChemClub held another lab coat tie dye and pub night, as well as going bowling.
We held our annual Grad Student Weekend Theme Night to welcome prospective students to the Department of Chemistry. This year’s theme was glow in the dark/neon, and students certainly glowed when singing karaoke!
ChemClub also hosts a number of professional development events. We held our annual faculty meet & greet at the Smith House. There were a number of workshops throughout the year including a CV workshop, a workshop on how to take data and turn it into writing, and an elevator pitch workshop. We held our annual headshot event in April.
Our biggest professional development event was our Networking Night on March 7th, where we hosted various company booths and a career panel with seven accomplished professionals in both traditional chemistry fields like pharmacy and government research, and non-traditional fields like patent law. This night concluded with a dinner and mixer.
The past year has been a fun year for ChemClub with all of these events. Our team is proud that we were able to increase our representation at UTM and UTSC and to expand our PD events.
Of course, we cannot do this alone, and we are very grateful for support from the department, the faculty, the chemistry student societies, the GSU, and of course, from the graduate students, who are the reason we hold these events!
We are looking forward to what the next year brings, and what we can do next!