Emily Dawson said a chocolate-tasting excursion during a trip to Hawaii last summer sparked the idea for her latest graduate research project.
“We went to one of the local farms with a bean-to-bar chocolatier, and he was going over how we might feel funny after eating so much of this kind of chocolate,” said Dawson, a science and special education teacher for Peoria Public Schools who also advises an afterschool research club.
“I was like, ‘Why?’ and they’re like, ‘Well, the theobromine content is really high in dark chocolate, as well as the caffeine content.’”
That got Dawson thinking about the chemical compounds in Hawaiian-grown cacao beans, and motivated her to search during her red-eye flight home to see if there’s any research literature on the subject in journal articles.
“And there’s not. There’s a lot about where cacao is grown throughout the world, in the cacao belt, which is usually 20 degrees north and south of the equator,” she said. “But Hawaii sits just outside of that area.”
So Dawson proposed a study of her own, and that resulted her in being awarded a Forrest E. Mars, Jr. Chocolate History Grant for $10,000, presented by the Mars corporation.
“They created the American Heritage chocolate and they have a society where they offer teacher grants and museum grants so that people can teach about chocolate, its history and how it incorporates into America’s history, mainly through the lens of chocolate,” said Dawson.
The Cacao Chronicles
The grant will assist a unique partnership between Peoria Public Schools and Western Illinois University, where Dawson is pursuing her third masters’ degree. Her thesis in chemistry explores the differences between Hawaiian cacao compared to the rest of the world.
“Due to Hawaii’s various climates on the islands, that there are certain bands on five of the islands where this plant can grow,” she said. “But it does grow with less water, and it’s not as warm as the typical plants. So it just made it something interesting that I can study and do the research.”
Dawson’s funded project, titled Cacao Chronicles: Writing Hawaii’s Chocolate Story Through Chemistry, measures the concentrations of theobromine, caffeine and theophylline in the Hawaiian cacao, aiming to identify a chemical fingerprint.
As part of the study, Dawson will work with Peoria school students on reproducible lab experiments as they learn analytical chemistry techniques.
“Doing research myself helps me to be able to teach them how to do research at a much higher level,” she said. “Through the lens of cocoa, I’ll be able to bring those lessons into the classroom to teach about Hawaiian history, the history of cocoa and chocolate within the United States.
“Then in turn, we’d look at some of the countries that some of our students may have heritage back to, some of the African countries or the South American countries, and just how chocolate can bring societies together. There’s a lot of different elements that I could bring into the classroom over the next year; it’s endless possibilities.”
Photo courtesy
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Emily Dawson
Dawson said the Mars grant likely will go toward acquiring the instruments and “consumables” she needs to do the study. She already has some equipment in place at Western Illinois, and she’ll be able to have some of the research club members assist her there.
“Each weekend, students that are in my group have the opportunity, if they’d like, to travel down on Saturdays and Sundays to do research within the college setting at the college lab,” she said. “So this grant is helping to bridge that gap between high school and middle school science lab activities, to give them more experiences in a higher grade laboratory setting.
“So, expanding their opportunities is another reason I was super excited to get this grant.”