[l-r] Prof. Joseph Rizzolo, Dept. Chair Mary Hoppe, Prof. Joseph Byrne, Assoc. Prof. Alison Fisher, Adjunct Instructor Richard Milius, Asst. Prof. Natalia Blank, Lecturer Seth Frisbie
Students in the department enjoy small class sizes from the very beginning of our program. We have a dedicated faculty who go out of their way to ensure students get the individual attention and support they need to succeed. By the time they are juniors and seniors, students have had the opportunity to work with faculty on independent research projects. Upon graduation, students are well prepared to embark on careers in industry, government, education, or the military, or for graduate education in chemistry, biochemistry, medicine, or law.
- Exceptional Student Activity
- Faculty Awards, Promotions and Honors
- New Faculty
- Professional Faculty Activity
- Teaching Excellence
- Undergraduate Research
Exceptional Student Activity
Timothy Curtis (Chemistry ’07) and Dr. Seth Frisbie collaborated with colleagues at the Université Bordeaux, the University of Toronto, the Bangladesh Association for Needy Peoples Improvement, and other institutions to develop the only accurate, precise, and safe way to measure arsenic to less than World Health Organization drinking water guideline (10µg/L) without expensive or highly specialized laboratory equipment. The National Institutes of Health reports that this method is expected to prevent over 120,000 cancer deaths in Bangladesh by identifying safe water wells for drinking.
Faculty Awards Promotions and Honors
The department congratulates two of its younger members. By virtue of her teaching excellence and work in biochemistry, Prof. Alison Fisher was granted tenure and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor at the spring meeting of the Board of Trustees.
This fall organic chemist Prof. Natalia Blank received the prestigious Board of Fellows Faculty Development Prize, awarded to support her design of a new course in forensic science.
New Faculty
Richard Milius joins the department this year as an adjunct faculty member in Chemistry. Dr. Milius earned his B.S. in Chemistry at Marquette University and his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at Northeastern University. He comes to us following an extensive research career in medicinal chemistry at Sigma-Aldrich Corporation where he was the Director of Sponsored Research and a Senior Project Manager. Dr. Milius brings a wealth of experience to the department having spent significant time at Harvard Medical School, Miles Laboratories, and Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Faculty Research and Professional Activity
Dr. Seth Frisbie is serving on the Scientific Committee for the Fourth International Conference on Metals and Genetics at the Université Paris Descartes in France. This conference will be held from July 20-24, 2008.
Teaching Excellence
Profs. Byrne, Hoppe, and Rizzolo continue to lead the department in adopting inquiry based learning in the classroom. Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) turns the classroom into an active learning venue in which students discover and construct knowledge from data provided by the instructor. In this way the students learn to think like scientists even in introductory courses. Since the implementation of this method, all chemistry and biochemistry seniors have scored in the 60th-95th percentile nationally on the Educational Testing Service Major Field Exam in Chemistry.
The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry provides a variety of opportunities for undergraduate research. In addition to taking the CH421-422 senior laboratory courses, students collaborate with faculty on independent, externally funded projects. Cyle Davenport (Biochemistry ’08) worked with Prof. Fisher during the summer and is currently pursuing a thesis project under her direction. “The effect of ethylene on expression of flower meristem identity genes in Arabidopsis thaliana during the photoperiod-induced transition to flowering” will measure the effect of knockouts in the ethylene signaling pathway on transcript levels of the flower meristem identity genes in Arabidopsis plants induced to flower by long photoperiods.
Lawrence Mastera (Environmental Science ’08) and Dr. Frisbie continue to work with an international team on a contaminant mapping project in western Bangladesh. This summer they discovered that 33% of the drinking water wells in this region have unsafe levels of arsenic, 48% have unsafe levels of uranium, and 75% have unsafe levels of manganese. In addition, smaller percentages of these wells have unsafe levels of antimony, nickel, lead, and chromium. Their goal is to identify the geological source of these toxic elements so that an affordable sampling program for this impoverished country can be better implemented. Larry will present some of their results at the Geological Society of America conference in Denver.
In his role as Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, Prof. Joseph Byrne currently administers a NASA grant supporting Mentored Undergraduate Research at Norwich University. This grant funds summer research at Norwich.
