Every student deserves chemistry.
Chemdu connects high schools without chemistry programs to volunteer chemistry professors, teaching assistants, and graduate students. Free. Remote. Effective.
A volunteer-run nonprofit. No fees. No grades. Just chemistry — for the students most likely to be left without it.
The chemistry gap is real — and it's measurable.
Chemistry and physics access in U.S. high schools varies dramatically with student demographics. Students at high-minority schools are roughly half as likely to have these courses available.
Sources: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine — Monitoring Educational Equity (2019); U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, Civil Rights Data Collection. "High-minority" schools are those with ≥75% non-white enrollment per OCR definition.
Why chemistry, specifically?
Because the chemistry gap is wider than any other science gap — and because chemistry is the science that keeps you alive.
It's life-saving knowledge
Bleach + ammonia makes deadly gas. Pressure cookers explode if mishandled. Radon causes lung cancer. The chemistry your students need most is the chemistry that protects them.
It's a college gateway
Pre-med, nursing, engineering, environmental science, pharmacy — all require chemistry. Students without high school chemistry start college a full year behind their peers.
It's an equity issue
A student's access to chemistry shouldn't depend on their zip code. The students least likely to have a chemistry teacher are the ones who would benefit most from one.
How it works
Three steps from need to first class. No paperwork mountain, no waiting list.
School signs up
An administrator, teacher, parent, or even a student fills out our short request form. Tell us your state, school, and what you need.
We match a volunteer
A Chemdu coordinator pairs the school with a vetted, background-checked volunteer chemistry educator based on time zone, availability, and curriculum preference.
Classes begin
Students attend live lectures over Zoom or Google Meet, using our complete Level 1 and Level 2 lecture materials — scripts, slides, demos, all included.
What students learn
Two complete levels of chemistry, designed by educators around real-world examples and life-saving knowledge.
Level 1 — Life Safety Chemistry
11 lectures · ~8.5 hours · math-light · no grades
Atomic structure, periodic table, bonding, reactions, stoichiometry, solutions, acids & bases, thermodynamics, kinetics, gas laws, nuclear chemistry — all anchored to household examples.
See the lectures →Level 2 — Advanced Chemistry
13 lectures · ~17 hours · with basic calculations
Goes deeper with isotopes, Lewis structures, balancing, mole calculations, molarity, pH math, thermodynamics, equilibrium, gas laws, half-life, spectroscopy, and organic chemistry.
See the lectures →We are new, and we are saying so.
Chemdu has not run a term yet. What we have is the part that usually stops a programme like this from starting: a finished curriculum, ready to teach.
- 24 lectures written across two levels — scripts, slides, and lecture notes, not an outline.
- Household-safe demonstrations specified for every lecture, for schools with no lab.
- Printable student notes as PDFs, so a class works even on a bad connection.
- Nothing to buy. No fee to the school, the district, or the family.
We would rather tell you we are at the beginning than invent numbers. If you are a school, you would be among the first we place — which means you get a coordinator’s full attention rather than a queue position.
If you teach chemistry, the same is true in reverse: the curriculum is already written, so your first class is a matter of picking a time.
A term, start to finish.
No paperwork mountain. This is the whole commitment, for the school and for the volunteer.
Two ways in, and both start today.
Schools tell us what they are missing. Chemists tell us when they are free. We do the matching — there is no application to write and no deadline to miss.