by Debbie Herrington (Grand Valley State University) and Ryan Sweeder (Lyman Briggs College, Michigan State University)
As undergraduate students majoring in chemistry, one of us in the US and the other in Canada, we were familiar with the Journal of Chemical Education, but had never heard of Chemistry Education Research (CER). Had either of us known it was possible to do graduate work in CER, we may have made some different graduate school choices. Maybe you are in a similar situation; just hearing about this thing called CER. Or maybe you are about to begin graduate work in CER but wanting to know more about the field in general. In this post we aim to provide a concise summary of the development and current state of the CER field as well as what we view as the future challenges and opportunities for the field. Having individually come to CER through notably different pathways, we hope our perspective gives you a sense of CER as a discipline and encourages you to jump in and participate in the work and important conversations needed to build the CER community and move it forward.