W. M. Keck Science Challenge Report
Beloit Science Center Planning Progress Report
Departmental Awards
Scholarships Awarded to Biochemistry and Chemistry Majors
Honors at Graduation
Honor Societies
The Beloit Biologist, Volume 19, 2000
Beloit College 24th Annual Student Symposium, April 13, 2000
One of the more significant events in the life of our department this year was the retirement of William Brown. He taught organic chemistry to generations of Beloiters and I expect many of you can still recall your organic project. For as long as any of the rest of us can remember, Bill has been an active and vital member of the department. He helped keep us organized and most recently guided the development of computer modeling for the Keck molecular visualization lab. We will miss seeing him regularly. His textbooks are well known and he continues his writing endeavors. He was honored at graduation by being named an Emeritus Professor of the College.
The ChemLinks project, an NSF systemic change initiative led by Brock Spencer at Beloit, has produced a dozen modules now published by Wiley. We use these modules in General Chemistry and in the Chemical Equilibrium course. As the development phase of the project winds down the ChemLinks postdoc, Jennifer Lewis, has moved on to a faculty position at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Heather Mernitz, the project assistant, has gone to graduate school at Tufts. We will miss them both.
After a serious fall in December, Roc Ordman returns to teaching this fall. His recovery has been steady and we are glad to have him back with us again.
Rama's successful NSF grant for a research laser has created a new emphasis for physical chemistry with the capability of measuring nanosecond lifetimes. He has also become our local expert for wireless computing.
Laura Parmentier, Suzanne Cox (Psychology Department), and Jennifer Lewis attended a workshop last summer to design a laboratory-based course in women's health. They successfully taught the course this spring and were asked back to be leaders at this summer's workshop.
The Keck Spectroscopy and Molecular Visualization Lab has made our life easier by providing both an iMac lab for general student use and a G4 lab for advanced work. As is traditional for our department, the student labs have more recent computers than do the faculty. That's where the work happens!
We continue planning for a renovation and addition to the science complex.
We are also excited about Beloit's new President. John Burris comes to us this fall from Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, where he helped provide undergraduate research opportunities. Several Beloit students have taken advantage of their Environmental Science Semester.
Beloit remains a busy place. For more details, see the rest of the newsletter. Enjoy!
In July, 1998, Beloit College received a $500,000 grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation to support science initiatives, one of only two grants to national liberal arts colleges from the Foundation's Science and Engineering Program. An initial grant for $250,000 established two interdisciplinary laboratories, one for spectroscopy and molecular visualization and the other for ecological and geographical modeling. The remaining $250,000 for science endowment required that the College obtain a minimum of $750,000 in new gifts and pledges from alumni, corporations, foundations, and other friends within one year. Part of the rationale for the proposal was that a grant from this nationally recognized Foundation would give a fresh endorsement of the excellence of the science program at Beloit, which would start a multi-year fundraising effort for science facilities while also beginning the transformation of Chamberlin Hall through the creation of two new laboratories that would serve as models for a building renovation.
As the two laboratories have developed over the past two years, several themes have become apparent. One is that an incremental approach that combines program and staff development with successive equipment additions has proved effective for making optimum use of these new instructional and research capabilities while refining the specifications for later equipment acquisitions. Second, the rapid rate of change in instruments and computers over the past two years has meant that the equipment actually purchased is much more capable and/or cheaper than originally specified in the proposal, providing substantially greater power and flexibility than originally envisioned. Third, students have often played a key role in exploring new uses for the resources available to them. And finally, the planning that went into the original proposal and its subsequent implementation has stimulated other plans for instrument acquisitions to support our science education program.
The spectroscopy and molecular visualization laboratory has progressed quickly with hardware acquisitions of eight iMac computers and six G4 workstations for student labs; acquisition of ab initio, molecular modeling, and molecular visualization software; early integration of these tools into the organic chemistry course through a workbook Molecular Visualization and Computational Organic Chemistry developed Bill Brown; and a student-faculty research project by Charles Abrams to develop educational software that has since been published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. as part of the ChemLinks curriculum development project. The final step in this development process will be to integrate the use of these powerful new tools into other courses.
For the spectroscopy part of this initiative, a major upgrade to the hardware (a Sun Sparc Station) and software for the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer has provided much more rapid data acquisition so that NMR can be used routinely in the larger General Chemistry and Organic Chemistry courses, as well as the capability to do more sophisticated experiments in advanced courses. The remaining curricular development to be implemented is to incorporate routine use of diode array UV-visible spectrophotometers into introductory chemistry and biology courses. The original proposal envisioned several sophisticated "traveling" diode array spectrophotometers that could move from lab to lab, but the recent introduction of inexpensive diode array "spectrophotometers on a chip" with fiber optic sampling means that we will be able to provide a number of spectrophotometers for routine use in these labs.
The new ecological and geographical modeling laboratory is equipped with eight Pentium-II PC's, ArcView Global Information System (GIS) software, a GTCO Surface-Lit Digitizer, and a 36" HP Designjet color plotter. Prof. Richard Stenstrom (Geology) has participated in several workshops in order to develop the expertise needed to use this system effectively, and has developed a course on "Applications of Geographical Information Systems and Remote Sensing." Course and research projects using the new system are now underway with digitized maps and photos for the Beloit area and acquisition of digital topographic maps of the Quetico area were Beloit geologists have accumulated geological and hydrological data over the past 25 years with support from the Keck Geology Research Consortium, among others. Prof. Yaffa Grossman (Biology) is using the system in her ecology course, and this summer she and her students are using it for research in the Beloit area, as is the Geology Field Methods summer course. Students have quickly put this powerful system and its 36" plotter to use in preparing poster presentations for class and research projects.
In order to receive the $250,000 W. M. Keck science endowment challenge, the College was required to raise $750,000 in new commitments for science endowment within one year. A total of $925,434 in gifts and pledges was received from 70 alumni and friends of the college, and four corporations and foundations. Income from this addition of more than $1,175,000 to the science endowment will support new faculty start-up costs, student-faculty research, equipment acquisitions, laboratory improvements, and science development projects. For the coming year, the income will be used to provide some of the required matching funds for two National Science Foundation equipment grants. One grant for $100,000 (with a $100,000 match required) to the Geology Department will support the replacement of the existing 17-year old scanning electron microscope (SEM) with an easy-to-use, fully automated SEM requiring little sample preparation so that it can be readily used for cross-disciplinary projects including the sciences, anthropology, and museum studies. The other grant for $35,000 (with a $35,000 match required) to the Chemistry Department will support a pulsed-laser laboratory for use in chemistry.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has supported biomedical and community outreach projects through two 4-year grants to Beloit College. We have recently learned that our third HHMI grant has been funded for $1 million over four years. This grant provides continued support for the BioQUEST project, our Howard Hughes Summer Scholars program for incoming students to do research, and community outreach programs such as our long-standing Girls and Women in Science program and work with a local elementary school.
In 1996, Beloit College's Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics began a thorough 2-year analysis of its current program and facilities. With financial support from a private donor, the faculty developed a mission statement and an extensive set of assumptions about the College, the Division, and individual departments to guide further planning. Given the development of our instructional and student-faculty research program over the past decades, we projected enrollments, staffing, program, pedagogy, equipment, and computer/information technology needs for the future to serve as a basis for evaluating our space needs. In the spring of 1998, when invited by the W. M. Keck Foundation to submit a proposal for a challenge grant to support science equipment and endowment, the Division turned its attention to assessing needs for instructional and research equipment. The development plan that emerged is already being realized; with support from the Keck grant we have established two laboratories described above. Subsequent successful National Science Foundation equipment grants are adding a new interdisciplinary scanning electron microscope facility and a pulsed laser facility.
During the fall of 1998, the College selected Ellenzweig Associates, Inc., a Cambridge (MA) architectural firm with considerable experience planning undergraduate science facilities, to help us translate our program plans into space needs and specifications. In the spring of 1999, we completed an analysis of the existing structure and site, and produced a preliminary set of master plan alternatives (renovation, addition plus renovation, or a new building) with rough cost estimates. These initial concepts were presented to the Board of Trustees in April 1999. The Board responded by passing a resolution asserting that the science center project is vital to the future of Beloit College and directing the administration to continue the planning process within the context of the general capital needs of the College.
With the assistance of a grant from the Matilda R. Wilson Fund, further planning with Ellenzweig Associates was completed during the fall of 1999, producing detailed facility programming plans, detailed cost estimates and phasing for each of the options under consideration, and a preliminary schematic design for the project. These plans were presented to the Board of Trustees at its February, 2000 meeting, along with a recommendation that the preferred option is to build an addition to Chamberlin Hall, followed by renovation of both Chamberlin and Mayer Hall to house the Science Division, Psychology, and ITS:
| Phase 1-Construct addition to Chamberlin Hall |
18,000 nsf |
$10.2 M |
| Phase 2-Renovate Chamberlin Hall |
52,150 nsf |
$12.2 M |
| Phase 3-Renovate Mayer Hall |
12,650 nsf |
$3.0 M |
| Total |
$25.4 M |
Hanging around Beloit College last fall, connected to the Biochemistry Program, was a time of great pride for everyone who was here. Twenty years of building a nationally recognized program is paying great dividends.
Brian Davis '81 came to speak to us about bioinformatics, a hot new area that has come from the sequencing of the human genome. A biochemistry major who among other achievements helped after the earthquake in eastern Europe, Brian is now an executive at Proteomics, an entrepreneurial biotech company that is making it big, putting together the biology and the information necessary to translate the human sequence into biomedical progress. It is so exciting now that the sequence is in and that Beloit alumni are leading the revolution about to follow.
Not only on the scientific side, but on the medical fronts too it is Beloit biochemists at the forefront. Doctors Yoon Kim '91 and Phil Christian '81 came to talk to current premeds about the present and future of medicine. As Phil is the "old-timer", he could already talk about changes in medical practice, which I am proud to say he has been instrumental in establishing. As Chief Medical Officer at Elder Health, he developed the protocol of keeping people healthy initially, instead of letting them become ill first. Working with thousands of elderly and Medicaid, he reported how this not only cut the rate of depression from high levels to almost nil among the elderly it also cut medical care expenses tremendously. How inspirational for current premeds at Beloit to hear what a true physician can do.
Stories like this have sure affected Yoon Kim '91, who decided he is forsaking a traditional specialization to pursue preventive medicine and public health. Graduated from MCW, on the way he has been picking up specialized training in "alternative" medical practices (which I happen to know now account for $2 out of every $3 in U.S. medical costs). Hearing about Yoon bringing critical scientific thinking skills to bear on the broad gap between "normal" US medical practice and current "alternative medicine" hype will help him, and future physicians from Beloit, to find us a cost-effective, people-centered medical system and practice which will help us all find better lives. To think that little old Beloit College in Wisconsin is helping to find that path!
There is concrete evidence that others are seeing the wisdom of our students and alumni. Rush Medical College has chosen Beloit College to begin developing a new early decision program to accept talented minority students from Beloit into medical school, with a goal of notifying Beloit minority candidates of acceptance to medical school at the end of sophomore year of college. The students would then be able to complete their four years at Beloit getting the best liberal arts education they can. And then they will bring their caring and creative approach to people and knowledge on to others entering medical school, as Tanya Danner '97 is doing at Rush right now, and many of you have done previously.
We are still awaiting word of the first Beloiter to win a Nobel Prize. But the next best thing is word from biochemistry alumnus Kelley Bradley '96, who in addition to discovering more about nanotechnology in graduate school at Rice University, also discovered that his mentor and graduate school advisor won the Nobel Prize.
As a parting note, thanks to many of you who continue to send talented high school students towards Beloit College so they can join the tradition here. My short term memory ain't so hot these days, but I recall Jeff Cleaveland '83, Reno Novak '83, Ken Katzen '79, and others have reminded me they too are trying to start their kids and friends off to a good start by sending them to Beloit. We'll be looking for them to make the future glow even brighter.
Charles Abrams
Assistant Professor
A.B. Washington University
A.M., M.Phil., Columbia University
Ph.D. (pending), McGill University
At Beloit since January 1998
https://www.beloit.edu/chemistry/Abrams/
The past year was full of new courses for me. In the Fall I taught an FYI class called "Connections Between Art and Science" as a part of the Year of The Arts. Early in the semester I took the FYI class to an outdoor confidence course (see the Summer 2000 BC Magazine, p. 11, for a description.) At the end of the semester our class put on a Hales Gallery exhibit, "Bridges: Between Art and Science" with imaginative model bridges constructed from basswood. Also in the Fall I co-taught organic chemistry with Laura Parmentier, which made that class all the more exciting and rewarding.
This Spring I taught a new interdisciplinary course (IDST)
called "Interactive Design", about human-computer interaction.
The student response was overwhelming - over 50 people signed
up (I limited class size to 22!) The class created interactive
tutorials, information displays, and conceptual artwork. I also
taught the sophomore seminar, now called "Professional Tools
for Chemists". The highlight of that course was a day spent
at the UW Madison chemistry library, followed by a delicious Thai
dinner. Also, students enrolled in both the seminar and Organic
II were able to do in-depth literature research on their chosen
synthetic project. Again there were some very ambitious projects,
including tamoxifen (finally successful!), fullerene, and a starburst
dendrimer. The "O-Chem Wall O-Fame" has grown to 15
molecules and 27 students, and we have run out of room on that
wall!
I retired in August 1999 and was named Professor Emeritus at Commencement May 2000. The 2nd edition of Introduction to Organic Chemistry was published in July 1999. The 6th edition of General, Organic, and Biochemistry, co-authored with Fred Bettelheim (Adelphi University and National Institutes of Health) and Jerry March (deceased 1997) will be published in July 2000. I am now working with Chris Foote (UCLA) on a 3rd edition of Organic Chemistry. The text is scheduled for publication in March 2001.
Jennifer Lewis enjoyed her final year as ChemLinks post-doctoral associate. She taught General Chemistry both semesters using 3 ChemConnections modules and in the Spring team-taught an interdisciplinary studies course on women's health with Laura Parmentier and Suzanne Cox (Psychology). This opportunity was a result of longstanding interests on the part of all three instructors, crystallized into an IDST course by their participation in the University of Wisconsin System Women and Science Program's Curriculum Reform Institute in the summer of 1999. Laura and Jennifer were invited back to the Institute as workshop mentors in the summer of 2000 and gave two presentations based on laboratory activities developed for the IDST course. Jennifer also gave several ChemLinks-related presentations during the year, including a mini-workshop on the Global Warming module with Mark Walter of Oakton Community College at the March ACS Meeting in San Francisco and another mini-workshop on that module at the summer Middle Atlantic Discovery Chemistry Project meeting in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. While in Pennsylvania, Jennifer visited her doctoral advisor and spent a few days enjoying laboratory work and not nearly enough time hiking. Jennifer's major faculty development project for the academic year, however, was the search for her next job. She is happy to report that her search was successful and she will be able to pursue her research interests in chemical education as a tenure-track faculty member in the chemistry department at UW-Milwaukee. Jennifer will maintain her professional ties to Beloit by serving as a project evaluator for Rama Viswanathan's exciting new laser set-up, which will enable physical chemistry students to investigate kinetic realms previously attainable only through reading about the work of others. She will also remain connected to ChemLinks as an evaluator for the NSF-funded national dissemination project for the 4 major systemic change initiatives in chemistry. She promises to clean her office before she leaves.
George taught Inorganic Chemistry and General Chemistry in the fall and Chemical Equilibrium and Instrumental Analysis in the spring. He stepped in as editor of the computer resources for the ChemLinks and MC2 projects and the Module Tools CD was published by Wiley, ISBN 0-555-11806-1, in January. See http://chemistry.beloit.edu. The Chemical Equilibrium course continues to be the testing ground for the ChemLinks module, Soil Equilibria: Where does acid rain go? Further revision this past year, and the addition of co-authors from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA is bringing this module to publication stage. The Lisensky family had an AFS student from Denmark living with them this past year.
As part of an outreach program to the general public, George has helped prepare a science kit called "Exploring the Nanoworld." This kit, created by George C. Lisensky (Beloit College), Karen J. Nordell (Lawrence University), S. Michael Condren (Christian Brothers University), Diana Malone (Clarke College), and Arthur B. Ellis (University of Wisconsin-Madison), is based on a 32-page color activity booklet that places the nanoscale in context and includes a dozen experiments to try. In the kit is a light emitting diode circuit, a fiber optic, a memory metal wire, a refrigerator magnet, a diffraction slide, and a 9-V battery. See http://mrsec.wisc.edu/nano for details.
•A. B. Ellis and G. C. Lisensky, "Designing the Nano-World,"
demonstrations at the National Building Museum in Washington,
D. C., as part of the Project Kaleidoscope Tenth Anniversary Celebration,
October 22-23, 1999.
•G. C. Lisensky, K. J. Nordell, and A. B. Ellis, "New
Adventures from Materials Science in Teaching Structure and Spectroscopy,"
Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies,
Vancouver, Canada, October 24-29, 1999.
•A. B. Ellis, G. C. Lisensky, K. J. Nordell, "Putting
Solids in the Foundation," New England Association of Chemistry
Teachers, MIT, Cambridge, MA, August 11, 1999.
•G. C. Lisensky and J. L. Stewart, "Build a Better CD
Player: How Can You Get Blue Light from a Solid?", American
Chemical Society Meeting, San Francisco, CA, March 26, 2000
•G. C. Lisensky and K. J. Nordell, "Semiconductors and
Metals", NSF Solid State Chemistry Program for Undergraduates
and College Faculty, University of Southern California, June 11,
2000.
•S. M. Condren, G. C. Lisensky, A. B. Ellis, K. J. Nordell,
T. F. Kuech, and S. A. Stockman, "LEDs: New Lamps for Old:
A Paradigm for Ongoing Curriculum Modernization", submitted
to J. Chem. Ed.
•J. A. Olsen, M. A. Chesnik, K. J. Nordell, M. S. Rzchowski,
S. M. Condren, C. R Landis, G. C. Lisensky, and A. B. Ellis, "Simple
and Inexpensive Classroom Demonstrations of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
and Magnetic Resonance Imaging," J. Chem. Ed. 77, 882 (2000).
•G. C. Lisensky, R. Hulet, M. Beug, and S. Anthony "Soil
Equilibria: What Happens to Acid Rain?" ChemLinks Module
(2000).
•D. J. Campbell, J. A. Olsen, C. E. Calderon, P. W. Doolan,
E. A. Mengelt, A. B. Ellis, and G. C. Lisensky, "Chemistry
with Refrigerator Magnets: From Modeling of Nanoscale Characterization
to Composite Fabrication," J. Chem. Ed., 76, 1205-1211 (1999).
•G. C. Lisensky, A. B. Ellis, H. Beall, D. J. Campbell, and,
J. Stewart, Build a Better CD Player: How Can You Get Blue Light
from a Solid?, ISBN 0-471-32469-8, Wiley, New York, 1999.
•A. B. Ellis, T. F. Kuech, G. C. Lisensky, D. J. Campbell,
S. M. Condren, K. J. Nordell, "Making the Nanoworld Comprehensible:
Instructional Materials for Schools and Outreach," J. Nanoparticle
Research, 1(1), 147, (1999).
I want to express my deep personal gratitude to those of you reading this. In many ways, I owe you my life. My very personal overview will help you understand.
It had been a wonderful previous year professionally three patents, participation in a consensus conference of the American Aging Association where top national experts decided everyone should take vitamin C and E supplements, a literary agent starting to market my manuscript on nutrition, great students like Matt Watson '00 working on my blood studies on lipid peroxidation and vitamin C and E. And to celebrate, Eliza, Max and I moved out to the country last October. After 23 years a block off campus, we wanted to try country living for a while, on five lovely acres forty miles out in the country. It was great, until Dec. 21st I climbed up a ladder to do some work over an outdoor deck and fell.
I was discovered unconscious, taken by ambulance to Monroe, then flown by helicopter to Madison, where the first prognosis was death. I survived but my right side was crushed, including my brain. The month of January my wife visited daily but I did not recognize her! In February, when I was coming to my senses, the fixatur cast on my arm was so painful I went crazy, and in the midst of it went into anaphylactic shock. Back in the emergency room, I was surrounded by doctors saying " this guy could die any minute!" My life really did flash before my eyes, in what I thought might be the final minute.
Looking back, I looked at a life and career filled with the joy of sharing the enthusiasm and growth of the students and alumni of Beloit College. Watching and participating in your struggles and triumphs had made my life so exciting, so fulfilling, with moments of glowing satisfaction as you have struggled and succeeded in continually new ways to make this a better world. I was lying there on the table in the ER ready to welcome death with pride that I had lived a glorious life.
I survived! It is a long, slow process recovering brain damage.
Your kind and generous alma mater gave me the spring semester
this year off to recover, and by this fall I will have healed
as best I can. I am looking forward to returning to teaching this
fall, knowing perhaps better than anyone what a great blessing
it is to have shared a portion of your lives.
In the fall, George, Jennifer, and I each taught a section of Chem 117. We continue to spend a lot of time in each other's courses and refine our picture of what works best at Beloit. Using that same cooperative teaching model, Charlie and I each taught a section of Organic in the fall.
Spring semester was particularly enjoyable for me this year. Suzanne Cox (Psychology Department), Jennifer Lewis, and I team taught our interdisciplinary, laboratory-based course in women's health. We had a nice mix of natural science, social science, and humanities students in the course which provided many natural opportunities to investigate topics related to women's health from multiple perspectives. I strongly recommend a course outside of one's own discipline as an outstanding teaching and learning opportunity. We were supported in the development of this course by our participation in the 1999 Curriculum Reform Institute, a component of the UW-System Women in Science Program. We were invited to attend the Women in Science Program Annual Retreat in May of 2000, and Suzanne and I gave a presentation based on our experiences in this course entitled "Women, Health, and Healing: An Interdisciplinary Laboratory-Based Course in Women's Health." Jennifer and I were delighted to be invited back to the CRI in the summer of 2000 as mentors, and there, in addition to mentoring faculty groups from across the country who are designing their own curriculum reform projects, we led two caucus sessions, "Constructing Science," and "Implementing Your Project at Your Institution," based on laboratory experiences in our women's health course.
This fall I am serving as the Director for the Beloit College Scotland Seminar. My family and I will be moving to Glasgow in August to prepare for our students' arrival in early September. We have an exciting and diverse group of students participating in this seminar, including declared majors Catherine Truong '02 and Lenny Tinker '02. Both Bill and George from this department have led this seminar in the past, and I am pleased to carry on that tradition.
Brock has continued to divide his time between teaching (a First Year Seminar on food in the fall and General Chemistry in the spring) and continuing to direct the National Science Foundation ChemLinks Coalition curricular reform project. The first ten general chemistry modules from ChemLinks and the ModularCHEM Consortium at Berkeley were published this year by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Over the past year he has helped lead project workshops at Beloit, New Mexico State University, Augustana College, Trinity University (San Antonio), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Texas - Austin. In March for the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco and again this August at the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor he helped organize and participated in symposia on "Using Real World Questions To Promote Active Learning" featuring the ChemLinks project. He continues as a member of the Project Kaleidoscope National Issues Task Force, helped to organize its 10th Anniversary celebration in Washington, DC last fall, and participated in its summer workshop in Keystone, Colorado this July. As chair of the committee that is planning for the renovation of Chamberlin and Mayer Halls, Brock has been heavily involved in working with architects to turn program needs into preliminary space specifications, which have been presented to the Board of Trustees. For the coming year, he will continue with the ChemLinks project for its final year and devote his half-time sabbatical leave to the planning process for the science center project.
Highlights for the Year:
Taught CS101 --Interfacing Instruments to Computers--as a one-module
course this spring. Some of you may remember the course in its
previous incarnation (c. 1985) when we used Commodore VIC-20s
with 5 K RAM and 16 K ROM. This time around, I got to use four
IBM 400 MHz Pentium laptops with 128 MB RAM, 6 GB Hard Drive,
CD, etc. The laptops were wirelessly networked to our campus intranet
and the Internet using standard PCMCIA cards (no programming required!)
and an Apple Airport hub (yes, the hub does actually work with
Windows machines also!). Most importantly, we were able to use
Visual Basic controls and DLLs to directly input data from
our instruments via the serial (COM) port into Excel spreadsheets!
On the chemistry front, the good news is that I finally succeeded
in getting a National Science Foundation Course, Curriculum and
Laboratory Improvement (NSF-CCLI) Program grant ($35 K worth of
laboratory instrumentation) to enhance Physical Chemistry Laboratory.
We have upgraded our pulsed laser setup with a Continuum Minilite
II pulsed YAG laser (5 ns pulse at 1064 nm). The laser can also
generate second (532 nm), third (355 nm), and fourth (266 nm)
harmonics using drop-in crystals with reasonable pulse energies
in the 1 to 5 mJ range. We plan to use this laser as the pump
laser for our LSI static cell dye laser. More importantly, we
have acquired electronics that allows us to collect data in real
time with nanosecond resolution-1 ns rise time photodiode detector-amplifiers
and an Infiniuum (Agilent/HP) four-channel 1 GHz analog bandwidth
and 4 Gsamples/sec/channel digital storage oscilloscope. At last,
we get to try out our pump-probe photophysics/photochemistry experiments
using the toy train optical delay line in a fashion where we can
actually record and integrate the signals in real time! We have
already looked at our LSI nitrogen laser pulse and the Minilite
II laser pulse with the scope and were able to record their temporal
pulse profiles with great ease. We have also measured the approximately
20 ns lifetime of quinine bisulfate in dilute sulfuric acid and
the lifetime decrease when quenched by chloride ion (see cover
pages). Roland Saito, a junior, is working on the setup and experiments
with me this summer. We welcome your hints, tips, comments, suggestions,
and any nuggets of information that you may have about pulsed
laser setups in general and/or our specific system. In particular,
I am interested in your experience with UV optics, large bandwidth
detectors and suggestions for cable connections...the scope has
50 ohm input impedance!
Send email to saitod@stu.beloit.edu or ramav@beloit.edu. Also,
check out our grant abstract at: http://www.nsf.gov/cgibin/showaward?award=9952604
On November 24, Brian Davis, '81, spoke to Genetics and Biochemistry classes about his work at Proteomics, Inc. (http://www.proteome.com/databases/index.html). After his Beloit degree and internship experience, he worked for a year before pursuing the Ph.D. at UT-Dallas. This was followed by a post-doc in Geneva, Switzerland. Next he got involved in relief efforts in Romania after the earthquake there, including doing environmental statements for GreenPeace and other places, before returning to another post-doc at UW-Madison. He then was the first person hired by Proteomics, one of the most exciting new ventures in the biotech field, a company which is in the forefront of bioinformatics - making the human genome data useful and manageable. The company has grown rapidly, and he's moved from the bottom, to middle management, to top management in the course of two years! In class, he spoke about the tremendous value of people skills, the value of breadth in liberal arts education, and how the bioinformatics field is taking shape.
Gaoussou Diarra, '95, a biochem major, visited Beloit this year and spoke about DNA. He is pursuing graduate studies at UW-Madison, and is one of the scientists who helped complete the E. coli sequencing project.
At Chemistry Seminar during Reunion Weekend, Oct. 1st, Mark Pence, '74, Eddie Limon, '89, Ian Schmitz, '98, and Kevin Braun, '99 shared their experiences during and after Beloit with current students. Kevin is in graduate school in physical chemistry at the University of Arizona, Ian is in biochemistry at Rush University, Ed is pursuing an MBA while working for Cytec, and Mark, who attended Beloit when the only computer on campus was an IBM mainframe, is now working with a software company.
Dr. Elisabetta Fasella, a post-doctoral associate with Professor Laura Kiessling at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, presented a two-part seminar on "Mimics of Transaminase Enzymes" and "Directing the Immune Response against Tumor Cells."
Drs. Yoon Kim '91 and Phil Christian are both biochemistry alums, now M.D.s, who spoke on campus this year. Yoon Kim finished his MD at Medical College of Wisconsin and is doing his residency in Public Health/Preventive Medicine in San Diego. Phil Christian has moved on to new ventures after helping a medical firm as Chief Medical Officer completely change the way modern medicine works (keeping people healthy instead of waiting until they get really sick), a strategy that saves millions of dollars and untold suffering.
The Annual Girls and Women in Science Conference was held April 7-8, 2000. This year's conference was organized by Marion Fass, Deborah Sapp-Lynch, Amy Sapp, and Leah Bandstra '01. This program brings about 40 sixth grade girls and their teachers and parents to Beloit College where they interact with students and faculty. Dr. Trudy Hartmann Malone, '89, returned for the week-end to participate in the alumnae panel.
FALL
| 117 | General Chemistry |
43 |
| 230 | Organic Chemistry I |
40 |
| 245 | Quantum Chemistry |
3 |
| 250 | Inorganic Chemistry |
5 |
| 300 | Biochemistry |
23 |
| 370 | Advanced Topics |
4 |
| 380 | Senior Seminar |
7 |
| 385 | Senior Thesis |
1 |
| 390 | Special Projects |
1 |
| 395 | Teaching Assistant |
2 |
| Total |
129 |
| 117 | General Chemistry |
61 |
| 220 | Chemical Equilibrium |
18 |
| 235 | Organic Chemistry II |
25 |
| 240 | Thermodynamics and Kinetics |
6 |
| 280 | Professional Tools for Chemists |
19 |
| 360 | Instrumental Methods of Analysis |
8 |
| 380 | Senior Seminar |
4 |
| 385 | Senior Thesis |
4 |
| 390 | Special Projects |
1 |
| 395 | Teaching Assistant |
2 |
| Total |
148 |
JOHN H. NAIR AWARD
honors an alumnus (Class of 1915) and provides membership in the
American Chemical Society for one or more seniors who plan careers
in chemistry.
Scott Barry '00
WILLIAM J. TRAUTMAN AWARD in PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY
(Professor at Beloit 1921-1947) given to a student doing outstanding
work in physical chemistry.
Chia Goh '01
EDWARD C. FULLER AWARD in CHEMICAL EDUCATION
was established by the majors of the Class of 1982 in honor of
Professor Fuller and is given to a junior or senior who has done
outstanding work as a teaching assistant.
Inga Dakota Smith '00
MERCK INDEX AWARD
is given to an outstanding senior and consists of a copy of the
Merck Index from the publisher.
David Murray '00
CRC PRESS FRESHMAN CHEMISTRY AWARD
recognizes outstanding work by a first-year student and consists
of a copy of the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics .
Muyiwa Awoniyi '03
AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY JUNIOR ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY AWARD
recognizes a junior by providing a year's membership in the ACS
Division of Analytical Chemistry and a subscription to the journal
Analytical Chemistry.
Chia Goh '01
AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY AWARD FOR ACHIEVEMENT IN ORGANIC
CHEMISTRY sponsored by the Division of Polymer Chemistry recognizes
outstanding work in the introductory organic chemistry course
by providing a subscription to Organic Chemistry and a
video tape about polymers.
Leonard Tinker '02
DAVID A. NORRIS '92 STUDENT RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP
was established by David's friends and family in his memory and
provides endowed support for chemistry-related undergraduate research.
Scott Barry '00
COMMUNITY SERVICE FELLOWSHIP
Muyiwa Awoniyi '03
YEAR OF THE ARTS AWARD
Leah Bandstra '01
| E. P. Bacon Scholarship | Lenny Tinker ('02) |
| Banucci Family Scholarship | Leah Bandstra ('01) |
| Elmer Bates Scholarship | Mayowa Agbaje-Williams ('00) |
| Paul W. Boutwell Scholarship | Jennifer Callen ('01) |
| Bullock Scholarship | Catherine Crowe ('00) |
| Cynthia & Donald Carson | Leah Bandstra ('01) |
| Joseph P. Collie Scholarship | Scott Barry ('00) Kathryn Stettler ('02) |
| Eaton Scholarship | Rebecca Mallinson ('01) Jennifer Callen ('01) |
| Ericsson Chemistry Scholarship | Catherine Crowe ('00) Mayowa Agbaje-Williams ('00) Tori Ziemann ('01) |
| Charles H. Ferris Scholarship | Angela T. Hahn ('01) |
| Ferwerda Science Division | Scott Barry ('00) Nicole Burton ('01) Courtney Maeda ('00) David S. Murray ('00) Jonathan Scheerer ('01) |
| Samuel A. Fugua Jr. Scholarship | Stephanie B. Williams ('01) |
| General Motors Scholarship | David S. Murray ('00) |
| Judge William Hooker Scholarship | David Atlas ('00) |
| Marjorie Brown Leff Scholarship | David Atlas ('00) Jennifer Callen ('01) Glen Cronan ('01) Matthew Heming ('02) Rebecca Mallinson ('01) |
| Minneapolis Area Alumni | Jennifer Callen ('01) |
| Moore Family Scholarship | Antoire Christie ('01) Chia Goh ('02) Tamara Lowe ('01) Inga Dakota Smith ('00) |
| Neese Scholarship | Jacqueline Montgomery ('01) |
| Presidential Scholarship | Leah Bandstra ('01) Nicole Burton ('01) Emily Good ('03) Angela T. Hahn ('01) Matthew Heming ('02) Ian C. Mandel ('02) David S. Murray ('00) Jonathan Scheerer ('01) Lenny Tinker ('02) Stephanie B. Williams ('01) Tori Ziemann ('01) |
| Reader's Digest Foundation | Tori Ziemann ('01) |
| Rock Island National Excellence | Ian C. Mandel ('02) |
| Rock Island Securities Scholarship | Nicole Burton ('01) Tori Ziemann ('01) |
| Sarah Wallbank Memorial Scholarship | Inga Dakota Smith ('00) |
| Scweppe Foundation Scholarship | Mayowa Agbaje-Williams ('00) Muyiwa Awoniyi ('03) Tamara Lowe ('01) Bashar Qumseya ('02) |
| Carl & Allison Williams Scholarship | Lenny Tinker ('02) |
| A&M Wilson Scholarship | Seth Levine ('01) |
| WI Academic Excellence Scholarship | Angela T. Hahn ('01) |
| Charles Winter Wood Scholarship | Jennifer Callen ('01) Courtney Maeda ('00) |
| SUMMA CUM LAUDE | Courtney Maeda |
| CUM LAUDE | Scott Barry David Murray |
| DEPARTMENTAL HONORS | Mayowa Agbaje-Williams -Biochemistry Scott Barry - Chemistry David Murray - Biochemistry Inga Dakota Smith - Biochemistry James Matthew Watson - Biochemistry |
| Phi Beta Kappa | Courtney Maeda ('00) Leah Bandstra ('01) Jonathan Scheerer ('01) |
| Mortar Board | Scott Barry Courtney Maeda Inga Dakota Smith |
This year our students again had great opportunities to gain professional experience by presenting their research at various programs and publishing their papers in the school magazine "The Beloit Biologist". Their topics give an indication of the outstanding research performed by our undergraduates. Following are the papers printed and presentations given:
"Telomerase and p53: A Critical Review of the Differences in Human and Mouse Biology, " Matt Watson.
"Aging and Mitochondria: Can We Live Forever? " David S. Murray.
"Zone-Specific Molecules in Articular Cartilage and Osteoarthritis Degeneration, " Mayowa M. Agbaje Williams.
"Supplemental Vitamin E Reduces Cancer Risk in Lipid-Rich Regions, " Inga Dakota Smith.
"Oral Contraceptives Increase the Risk of Epithelial Ovarian
Cancer, " Taherreh J. Jalali.
Mayowa Agbaje-Willams Biochemistry '00
Water Soluble Vitamins
Matt Watson Biochemistry '00
RT-PCR as a Quantitative Method of Measuring Telomerase Activity
David Sean Murray Biochemistry '00
The IEX-1 Gene: The How's and Why's of Knockout Mouse Research
Tamara N. Lowe Biochemistry '01
The Food Pyramid and Good Health
Tori Ziemann Chemistry '01
Scrub-Oak and Aluminum Concentrations in the Soils of Frost Bottoms
of Martha's Vineyard
Jonathan R. Scheerer Chemistry '01
Morphine: Innovative Research and Historical Perpectives
Scott J. Barry Chemistry '00
Investigations of Novel Copper-Rich Transition Metal Oxides
Muyiwa Awoniyi ('03) is working with Dr. Warren Knudson in the Biochemistry Department at Rush University on a project funded by the Schweppe Foundation.
Leah Bandstra ('01) is doing research this summer at the University of Rhode Island's Oceanography Department, followed by a fall in the Environmental Semester at Woods Hole Marine Biology Laboratory on Cape Cod.
Rick Bowker ('01) is working with Charles Abrams this summer on "Synthesis of Helical Analogs of Ethidium Bromide."
Nicole Burton ('01) is doing a summer internship at Baylor University Department of Biochemistry which involves investigating the shifting specificity model of enzyme catalysis.
Chia Goh ('01) is a participant this summer in the National Science Foundation Solid State Chemistry Program (which George Lisensky is again addressing) working for Dr. Mark Thompson at University of Southern California where he is synthesizing cyclometalated platinum complexes, incorporating them into organic LEDs and testing their performance.
Emily Good ('03) will be attending a session at Tufts Veterinary College entitled "Adventures in Veterinary Medicine."
Seth Levine ('01) will be participating in a NSF funded Research Experience for Undergraduates(REU) program at the University of Wyoming. His research involves organic and inorganic synthesis with bioinorganic applications.
Tamara Lowe ('01) is working with Dr. Mary Hunzicker-Dunn in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at Northwestern University Medical School on a project funded by the Schweppe Foundation.
Rebecca Mallinson ('01) spent the fall on the Beloit exchange program in Brazil. This summer she is working in Portland, Oregon at Triple Point Biologics, a company that prepares and sells antibodies and purified proteins.
Bashar Qumseya ('02) is working with Dr. Francis Szele at Northwestern University on a neurobiology project funded by the Schweppe Foundation.
Roland Saito ('02) is designing fluorescence and pump-probe experiments for the p-chem laboratory with the new high-energy laser with Rama Viswanathan.
Jonathan Scheerer ('01) will be participating in a NSF funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at Colorado State University
Catherine Truong ('02) is spending the summer teaching conversational English at the SD Training School in Yanji, China. She will participate in the Beloit seminar in Scotland in the fall.
Stephanie Williams ('01) will be participating in an internship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Department of Family Medicine working with Dr. Doug Smith. She will be administering the Meyers-Briggs personality typing test to 3rd year medical students and helping them use the results to plan their 4th year in school and their residency. She will be attending research conferences and presenting her work at the end of the summer.
Tori Ziemann ('01) spent last fall in the Environmental Semester at the Woods Hole Marine Biology Laboratory on Cape Cod. This summer she is doing research at an ecological research station on the North Slope near Prudhoe Bay in Alaska.
| Muyiwa Awoniyi Leah Bandstra Richard Bowker Nicole Burton Jennifer Callen Antoire Christie Glen Cronan Meghan Eicher Johnny Franco Chia Goh Emily Good Angela Hahn Matthew Heming Benjamin Isaac Seth Levine Tamara Lowe Rebecca Mallinson Ian Mandel Jacqueline Montgomery Juliette Oda Bashar Qumseya Roland Saito Jonathan Scheerer Heather Seabury Kathryn Stettler Leonard Tinker Catherine Truong Stephanie Williams Tori Ziemann |
2003 2001 2001 2001 2001 2001 2001 2001 2002 2002 2003 2001 2002 2001 2001 2001 2001 2002 2001 2001 2002 2002 2001 2002 2002 2002 2002 2001 2001 |
Biochemistry Chemistry Chemistry Biochemistry Chemistry Biochemistry Biochemistry Biochemistry Biochemistry Chemistry Biochemistry Biochemistry Chemistry Chemistry Chemistry Biochemistry Biochemistry Chemistry Biochemistry Biochemistry Biochemistry Chemistry Chemistry Biochemistry Chemistry Chemistry Chemistry Chemistry Chemistry |
Chicago, IL Kalamazoo, MI Alma, MI Colorado Springs, CO Maplewood, MN Nassau, Bahamas Urbana, IL Dammeron Valley, UT Las Cruces, NM Georgetown Penang, Malaysia St. Albans, VT Newton, WI Houston, TX Leawood, KS Mount Vernon, OH Freeport, Bahamas Coppell, TX Minocqua, WI Beloit, WI Honolulu, HI Bethlehem, Palestine Honolulu, HI Leawood, KS N. Weymouth, MA Edgerton, WI St. Louis, MO Chicago, IL Cottage Grove, WI Western, NE |
Mayowa Agbaje-Williams - Nigeria (Evergreen Park, IL.) Biochemistry. In the summer of 1999, Mayowa got an internship in Rush University working on Superficial Zone Protein. Her research was focused on trying to visualize the protein in paraffin sections. This had not been done before because of the concern that the protein might be denatured in the extensive heating that processing a tissue for paraffin sections involves. This summer she is working with Dr. Arthur Veiss in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Northwestern University Medical School on a project funded by the Schweppe Foundation. Mayowa loves to read novels, listen to music, dance as a form of exercise and cook. She plans to work as a program assistant in the Help Yourself Program over the summer and at Goldie-Floberg Child Care Worker. She will also be preparing for the MCAT which she plans to take in August with the purpose of becoming a physician.
David Atlas - Skokie, IL. Chemistry. To prepare for life as a physician, David has been involved in a variety of activities, shadowing physicians (in addition to his father) and taking leadership positions in a variety of organizations. In addition, pursuing an active music major on top of his science courses has shown that he can handle a tremendous load while maintaining his calm, serious attitude.
Scott Barry - Waukesha, WI. Chemistry. I initially came to Beloit College as a biology major and proceeded to enroll in both human biology and general chemistry my freshman year. I enjoyed human biology and admittedly disliked general chemistry, so I dropped my biology aspirations and pursued a chemistry major. It makes sense to me. To that end, I am especially thankful to Prof. Bill Brown for showing me the beauty and challenges of chemistry and encouraging me to take more chemistry classes. While at Beloit I have had the opportunity to participate in two summer research programs. In the summer of '98 I did chemical education/visualization research with Prof. Charlie Abrams at Beloit College and in the summer of '99 I did transition metal oxide research with Prof. Kenneth Poeppelmeier at Northwestern University. I have presented the results of these research projects at seven different conferences/symposia including presentations at Washington University in St. Louis, Carroll College, The University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, and two symposia at Beloit College during student symposium day. I have also attended three conferences on superconductivity and one conference on chemical education at The Univeristy of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. I was fortunate this year to receive a grant from the Materials Research Society for a proposal that I wrote on investigating new ruthenium based cuprates. This grant allowed me to conduct research both at Beloit College and at Northwestern University throughout the '99 -'00 academic year. Next fall I will be a graduate student at Northwestern University working in the Poeppelmeier group. I am very grateful to the chemistry faculty for providing me with the tools to achieve my goals.
Catherine Crowe - Oak Forest, IL. Chemistry and Health Care Studies minor. Cathy came to Beloit with an Associates Degree from South Suburban College in the Chicago area. While here, she went on the Scotland Seminar and spent a summer and fall semester on at internship at the Health Research and Policy Centers in Chicago. She will start graduate school in Public Health at Loyola University in Chicago this fall.
Carlo Giacomoni - Chicago, IL. Chemistry and Psychology. I think I might be going to Iceland this summer, then I'm going to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for graduate school in organic chemistry. Being a chemistry major was pretty cool. I would recommend it. If you plan on going on to graduate school, definitely do an internship or summer job. I have done a few in my days. The summer after my freshman year I worked at TheraTest Labs (Dr. Teodorescu) in Chicago, after my sophomore year I worked at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the department of microbiology and immunology (Dr. Chakrabarty). Both of those jobs were as a lab aide. Last summer I worked as a research assistant in the department of medicinal chemistry (Dr. Dunn) at the University of Illinois at Chicago for a few weeks before going off to being a camp counselor for children with severe emotional and behavioral problems. One of the strong advantages I found in doing an internship/summer job is that you gain critical real world experience which graduate programs love to see. Equally important, summer bosses write great letters of recommendation which really help to get you in. If you want help getting hooked up with a job at any of these places let me know, I'll see what I can do. While not sniffing ether I'm a member of the following extracurricular stuff: Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity, Outdoor Environmental Club, psychology major, music minor, physics minor, and I tried writing a book too.
Taherreh Jalali - Bombay, India. Biochemistry. During my years at Beloit I was a Resident assistant, an administrative assistant in alumni and development, an ER volunteer at Beloit Memorial hospital, on the student health council, participated in the Girls and Women in Science program, VP of the international club. I also participated in a research project in which I observed development of children between 7 months and 24 months over a period of 3 months using pediatricians Dever II DA form. Furthermore, I shadowed Dr. Jane Fossum to compare her observations on child development to mine. I traveled to Scotland during the fall of my junior year. The 4 years of Beloit have been my best. My future plans are unclear right now, but I hope to find a job in biochemistry and eventually go to medical school.
Theresa Johnson - Beloit, WI. Chemistry. This summer I will be working with Rama Viswanathan on an article about Clara Immerwahr. This will commence just as soon as things slow down a bit here at work [Alliant Energy/WP&L Chemistry Lab Department at Rock River Generating Station]. We are preparing for the summer run, in anticipation of a hot summer with demand being high. Outside of devoting a portion of my time to Rama, I will be watching Elly enjoy her first summer. She took her first free-standing steps last Saturday! We've begun landscaping our yard. Doing it ourselves and by hand, we are finding it to be a lengthy process (just as any home improvement project). Hopefully the roses and lillies will bloom someday. I will begin the MBA program with Cardinal Stritch University in either August or later this fall.
Courtney Maeda - Hilo, HI. Chemistry. Courtney will start graduate work in veterinary medicine at the University of Pennsylvania this fall.
David Murray - White Lake, MI. Biochemistry. This summer, I plan on relaxing at home before heading off to graduate school in Portland, Oregon in the fall. The graduate school I will be attending is Oregon Health Sciences University to obtain a Ph.D. in Immunology. During my four years at Beloit I have had two internship experiences. The first was at Beloit with the Howard Hughes program. My second was last summer at the University of Chicago in the department of immunology. I have received three awards at Beloit, two in chemistry (William J. Trautman award and the Merck Index award) and one in biology. My extracurricular activities include running track my first year, playing viola in the college orchestra all four years, and being an active member of the MUN club all four years. Finally, I spent the fall of my junior year in Scotland.
Inga Dakota Smith - Nassau, Bahamas. Biochemistry. Dakota spent the summer after junior year working with children recovering from brain surgery in Cuba and the Bahamas. She performed physiotherapy and did general recovery techniques. She will attend University of the West Indies Medical School in Mona, Jamaica.
James Matthew Watson - Decatur, IL. Biochemistry. Matt was busy at Beloit, TAing genetics, chemistry 117, and biochemistry. Among many research projects at Beloit, Matt spent last summer working on the protein telomerase under the guidance of Dr. Dorothy Shippen at Texas A&M University, research which he presented at the Undergraduate Research Symposium last spring. He was involved in Roc Ordman's research on vitamin C and E during his senior year. He graduated with honors in biochemistry and a minor in philosophy. After graduation, he has gone back to TX to continue work there, funded by Geron Corporation. Based on this experience, he is deciding whether to continue with graduate school.
Keep sending us your news!
1950 Lowell Ericsson retired April 30th from the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington after nearly 40 years there. His retirement was short, however, since he immediately accepted a position in the Protein Chemistry Department at Immunex Corporation in Seattle.
1967 Eric M. Gordon is Senior Vice President of Research at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He writes," After spending nearly 20 years in the "big" pharmaceutical industry I moved to Palo Alto in 1992. Since then I have been involved in 3 biotech start-ups, all of which have been very exciting. The latest company is Sunesis, which is just 1 year old and now has 42 employees. The company seeks to use new technology involving both protein structure concepts and combinatorial chemistry to create small molecules to inhibit protein:protein interactions. This goal has traditionally been a tough area in drug discovery. In 1998 I edited a book on combinatorial chemistry which was published by John Wiley & Sons (Combinatorial Chemistry and Molecular Diversity in Drug Discovery). My daughter will attend UW Madison as a freshman this year."
1969 Alan Rocke, Henry Eldridge Bourne Professor of History at Case Western Reserve University, has been named to receive the 2000 Dexter Prize for outstanding contributions to the history of chemistry by the American Chemical Society's Division of the History of Chemistry. The award will be presented in August at a symposium at the ACS national meeting in Washington, D.C. According to an article announcing the award in Chemical and Engineering News (May 20, 2000), "Rocke's first book, Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth Century: From Dalton to Cannizzaro, quickly became the standard treatment of the subject. His second book, The Quiet Revolution: Hermann Kolbe and the Science of Organic Chemistry, uses Kolbe's life as an organizing principle to guide the reader through the complex, as well as technically challenging, development of structural organic chemistry in the 19th century. A third book, focusing on French chemist Adolphe Wurtz, is forthcoming."
1970 Jim Espy has joined Pasco Laboratories in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, as Technical Administrator. Pasco Labs, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Becton Dickinson, makes panels used by hospitals and clinics all over the world to test the efficacy of drugs against different microbes.
1975 David Hull is Director of Transplantation at Hartford Hospital (Connecticut) where he is heavily involved in liver surgery and transplantation and has developed new operations such as Hand Assisted Laparascopic Donor Nephrectomy.
1985 Lisa Fullerton Staiman completed a pharmacy degree from Ohio State University and is now a practicing pharmacist in Cleveland. She would enjoy having any Beloit College chemistry or biochemistry students with questions about the pharmacy profession contact her at: lstaiman@aol.com.
1987 Krista Van Vleet has completed her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan with field work in Bolivia and is now Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Bowdoin College.
1988 Brenda Lujan lives in Denver and works as an environmental attorney with the law firm of Burns, Figa, and Will (http://www.burnsfigawill.com/) in a position that enables her to " put my science AND legal education/experience to work at a very reputable environmental/litigation firm."
1988 Anne Whalen Ryter is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Western State College in Gunnison, Co. She writes, "I love teaching and Gunnison is a fantastic place to be."
1990 Alice Dobie-Galuska and John Galuska ('93) announce the arrival of Toudora Helen Dobie Galuska on December 12, 1999.
1990 Lynn Ryland is working for Amgen in Boulder, Colorado.
1990 Linda Zuckerman has finished her post-doctoral work at Genentech and has accepted a position as Scientist. She is involved in outreach programs in the Bay area that focus on girls and women in science.
1991 Christy Plummer Slye has recently become hardware
sales manager for TrueLine Systems in Walnut Creek, California,
a division of BuildNet (www.buildnet.net).
1992 Aline Schimmel works in Graphic Production at the Liposome
Company. Her team took a breast cancer drug to the FDA advisory
committee last fall, and she was involved in preparing a 125-slide
presentation (with 370 back-up slides and six presenters!).
1993 Anna Applebaum Sigworth is in the final phase of her Ph.D. work at the J.P. Scott Center for Neuroscience, Mind and Behavior at Bowling Green State University. She and Ben are expecting their first child in October, 2000.
1993 Bill Trost has graduated from medical school and been accepted into the Psychiatry Residency Program at Duke University. He writes,"I think my education at Beloit was very valuable in my med school career. I had the freedom at Beloit to explore areas of thought that I might not have explored elsewhere and I also feel I got a solid education."
1993 Brenda Waller has completed her post doctoral work as Education Outreach Coordinator for the Center on Polymer Interfaces and Macromolecular Assemblies (CPIMA) at Stanford University, which she described at a chemistry seminar last year. She has recently accepted a position as Application Instructor/Course Developer with MDL Information System, Inc. in San Leandro CA. MDL Information Systems is a chemical database software company; one of its products is ISIS Draw. Brenda would be happy to speak with students/alums interested in chemical database programs. She can be reached at bwaller@mdli.com.
1994 Sudha Rani Pavuluri has recently completed her final medical school rotations, and she will be completing her internship year in England before applying for jobs in the States for 2001.
1994 Brian Pfister has completed his Ph. D. at Rush
University and has accepted a three year postdoc position at the
University of California San Diego at their cancer research center.
1995 Tim Korter is finishing up his Ph.D. at the University
of Pittsburgh in physical chemistry.
1995 Megan Reich has changed jobs at S.C. Johnson in Racine, Wisconsin and is now working on screening new technologies to determine if they can make a useful and affordable product.
1996 Carrie Tuit, a graduate student at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution working on the marine biogeochemistry of molybdenum, has had her first paper published, "Anthropogenic Pt and Pd in the sediments of Boston Harbor" (Environmental Science and Technology, 15 March 2000, 927-932). She also reports that shortly after it was announced that John Burris would be leaving the Woods Hole Marine Biology Laboratory to become president of Beloit, he met Carrie and other recent Beloit alumni at Woods Hole to talk about Beloit.
1996 Kim White has just accepted a new position as Lecturer / Assistant Director of the College of Arts and Sciences Advising Center at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. She spent the summer teaching Biological Chemistry at Carroll College in Waukesha, WI, and she has been teaching at Brevard College in North Carolina. She is also considering beginning work toward a Ph.D. in Education. She writes, ". My goal is to combine my M.S. in chemistry with a Ph.D. in Education to get involved in science education and science outreach."
1998 Kelly Johanson is in graduate school in biochemistry at Tulane University. She writes, "Greetings from the Big Easy! I've survived my first year of graduate school, floods, hurricanes, exams and all. I think it makes life a little more exciting to live in a place where you have to make your evacuation plan every fall in case the "big one" hits." She is working for Professor Linda Hyman who works on transcription termination and 3' end formation in yeast.
1999 Kevin Braun is enjoying life as a physical chemistry graduate student at the University of Arizona. He received an award for outstanding teaching last spring, and will soon be finished with classes and focus full-time on his research.
1999 Suzanne Thorp is a graduate student in medicinal chemistry at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill where she is studying hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferases (purine salvage enzyme) as a possible target for inhibitors of diseases like malaria and Chagas' disease.
Warren F. Wilhelm, M.D. '40, who passed away on June 29, 1999, Lake Ozark, MO.
Gifts to Chemistry and Biochemistry have been received from: Robert F. Taylor '37, Edward L. Compere '50, Stephen K. Hulme '78, Jeffrey S. Cleaveland '83, Manish N. Patel '94, and Ian J. Schmitz '98.
The Paul W. Boutwell Scholarship this year went to Jennifer Callen '01. When Roc Ordman asked alumni in 1977 to write of their memories, chemistry alumni responded with a loud voice - Professor Boutwell was the chemistry professor at Beloit who transformed my life. His son, Dr. R. K. Boutwell '39, attended Beloit and went on to become a biochemistry professor. This year, he received the American Cancer Society Medal for his research on cancer. The Boutwell Scholarship reminds us all of the distinguished roots from which we spring, and which we need to continue to nourish.
The Lowell H. Ericsson '50 fund has continued to grow. Students receiving financial support and encouragement from this fund include Mayowa Agbaje-Williams '00, Cathy Crowe '00, and Tori Ziemann '01.
Thank you for your support, and thank you to all those not listed here who continue to give generously to Beloit College!
Our alumni email network is growing steadily. It has been tremendously helpful to our present students for finding mentors, summer research positions, and post-graduate opportunities. Beloit College Alumni office now maintains an email directory that can be accessed at https://www.beloit.edu/alumni/emaildir/. Please send updates and corrections to that list.
Chemistry faculty
abrams@beloit.edu
brownwh@beloit.edu
greene@beloit.edu
lewisj@csd.uwm.edu
lisensky@beloit.edu
ordman@beloit.edu
parmentr@beloit.edu
spencer@beloit.edu
ramav@beloit.edu
Departmental web pages
https://www.beloit.edu/chemistry
https://www.beloit.edu/biochemistry
https://www.beloit.edu/biology
http://chemlinks.beloit.edu/
http://chemistry.beloit.edu/
Please send us your news- this is what keeps the newsletter going! Send updates and information to Prof. Charlie Abrams, Beloit College, 700 College St., Beloit, WI 53511, or, if you can, send email to abrams@beloit.edu or any of the Chemistry faculty!