Chemistry Professor Brings International Flair to Classroom and Her Colleagues

CLARKSTON, Ga.—Visit Dr. Luise Strange de Soria’s office and you’ll find a room packed with stuffed toys from Japan and Disney, petite paper lanterns and colorful gifts from her former students. It’s perhaps not what you’d expect from a professor who teaches organic chemistry—a subject that can cause seasoned health care professionals to sweat with remembered study nightmares.

The 2024 Global Engagement Award recipient’s playful office environment is partly because Strange de Soria wants to create a no-sweat zone for her students by creatively combining the STEM subject with her love of all things international.

She is a long-time faculty advisor to the campus Vietnamese Club—and an officer in the Conference of the Americas, working for more than 25 years with that program. And for the past several years, she’s sponsored programs for International Education Week and the campus International Festival.

It’s not hard to celebrate the international cultures on the Clarkston Campus, where many of the students are from different countries, she said. “The students are awesome and come from a ton of different places. I want to make them feel at home here,” she said.

She has put a statement about embracing cultural diversity in her syllabus, and often brings an international flair to her chemistry classes. That’s why you may see a periodic table written in Cyrillic on her wall. Or a map with flags pinpointing countries where those elements were discovered.

During COVID, she worked with chemistry lab instructor Avinash Sukhu to create an international bingo game to highlight special science landmarks across the world.  Winner squares included “The largest periodic table in the world is in Spain; the largest theatre for anatomy observation is in Padua, Italy, constructed in the late 1500s,” she said.

Years ago, a student from Vietnam asked her to be faculty advisor to a newly formed club. “My best friend is Vietnamese, so I wanted to do this,” she said.

It’s a role she has continued for more than two decades. During campus student involvement fairs, students on the Clarkston Campus will see her helping out at tables for both the Chemistry Club and the Vietnamese Club—either serving up tasty food--or concocting colorful chemical reactions on the campus quad.

Another ‘ask’ to help with an international initiative came from the former secretary of the University System of Georgia’s Conference of the Americas. “I started with the conference in 1996 when it was sponsored by the Board of Regents, and received a faculty scholarship to Mexico—I stayed with my husband’s uncle’s family the first weekend of that trip,” she said.

When the secretary of the organization retired, she was asked if she would be interested in the position.

Strange de Soria not only became secretary, but she, along with anthropology professor Ernie Guyton and mathematics professor Priscilla Dodds also successfully brought the statewide conference to the college, hosting it for six years, she said.

The feat was even more remarkable for a two-year college— GPC did not have an existing Latin American or Caribbean studies program. The program was sponsored this past February by the University of Georgia’s Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute.

While she loves her job and students, teaching wasn’t her first choice, she said.  The Florida native wanted to study veterinary medicine.

That career died quickly. “I realized after my sophomore year I hated the sight of blood and even more so when animals were cut open,” she said.   She was inspired to teach chemistry and organic chemistry by one of her University of Central Florida undergraduate professors. “He was very charismatic. I always try emulating his methods in my classrooms,” she said.

Strange de Soria began her teaching career at what was then DeKalb College in 1991; coming to work as a lab coordinator and rising through the ranks to become a full professor.

“I came to the college when the science lab was in the ‘D’ building on campus and have worked through a building change and two lab renovations, the most recent one completed in the fall of 2023, she said.

This fall, she’ll start her 33^rd year at the college.