JILL SCHRAMM/MDN Somerset Court employee Olivia Meeder, left, and resident Raymond Atwood hold a plaque of the periodic table that Meeder had made for Atwood for his help with her chemistry coursework.

When Somerset Court employee Olivia Meeder was struggling with the chemistry coursework required to get into nursing school, she didn’t have to look far for help.

Raymond Atwood, a retired science teacher, had moved into Somerset’s assisted living three years ago. When Somerset’s assistant director steered Meeder his way, he was happy to come to her rescue.

And what a rescue. Meeder went from struggling to acing her chemistry course, placing her in an excellent position for acceptance into Minot State University’s bachelor degree nursing program.

Science generally is her best subject, but chemistry and the math that goes with it is not, she said. She figured she would end up with a C if she tried to do it on her own.

“Thanks to Ray and his help, I was able to finish chemistry with an A. It would not have been an A without Ray,” Meeder said. “That class actually was the deciding factor in my admission to Minot State for their nursing program.”

Because she did not take her undergraduate courses through MSU, she needed straight As to counter her lack of MSU credits in the admission point system, she said.

A licensed practical nurse, Meeder is working toward a four-year registered nursing degree, for which chemistry is a prerequisite.

“Chemistry is not my strong suit. I have not had it since I was a sophomore in high school, so it’s been a little while. I graduated in 2009,” she said. “Definitely, high school chemistry looks a little bit different than college chemistry.”

Meeder said she had been working on a chemistry unit on balancing equations and wasn’t completely sure she was grasping it. It turned out she wasn’t doing the work correctly, but Atwood explained how to do the equations and continued to work with her as the assignments became tougher over the three weeks of the unit in her online class.

“Actually having a teacher to teach how to do it, instead of just watching a video, was a game changer, and the way that Ray explained it, I was like, ‘This makes sense,'” Meeder said.

Atwood graduated with a biology degree from Minot State University, where he also had taken some chemistry courses. Teaching in smaller schools meant he needed to teach more than biology so he took additional chemistry classes from an instructor who would come from Fargo to provide all-day classes on Saturdays. He also studied physics for a year.

His first teaching assignment was in Columbus. He later taught in New Town and at Erik Ramstad in Minot before leaving teaching to work with his father-in-law on the ranch at Powers Lake for several years.

Then the Powers Lake school contacted him about its need for a physics and chemistry teacher.

“I had about 150 cows, so I said, ‘Well, I’ll try it right away in the morning one year and see how it goes.’ Well, it went for 18 years that I taught in the morning, chemistry and physics,” he said.

During that time, he took two classes from the University of Iowa that showed him new, interactive ways to teach concepts through experiments.

“It made it so much more fun for the kids and so much more fun for me,” he said.

He retired in 2005 after 26 years in teaching.

Atwood said he had taught so many years that it all came back easily in tutoring Meeder, whom he called a great student.

“She caught on real quick,” he said.

“It’s the teacher,” Meeder responded. “The balancing equations did not make sense, and by the time we had gone over it and we were done, it made sense.”

Meeder said she asked a friend in North Carolina who does woodworking to make a plaque of a periodic table that included Atwood’s name as “Best Chemistry Tutor” with “Be,” the symbol for beryllium.

“I just really felt like he deserved his own element on the periodic table,” Meeder said.

Atwood had been recognized while at Powers Lake as a teacher of the year in western North Dakota through a media awards program.

“I won a computer and a bunch of other things,” he said, turning his gaze to Meeder’s gift. “But I cherish this more.”