What's New in Chemistry | Recent Chemistry Student Awards
Recent Chemistry Faculty Awards | Departmental Accolades
What's New in Chemistry:
Glennis Rayermann '09 recently earned a National Defense Science
and Engineering Graduate Fellowship and an honorable mention from the
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.
Anna Cunningham '11 was awarded an National Science Foundation Fellowship and also received the J. William Fulbright Scholarship.
Alicia Schep '11 was awarded the Winston Churchill Scholarship.
Kanny Wan '11 was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship along with an internal fellowship at The Scripps Research Institute.Twenty-five Harvey Mudd College students who presented the results of their research at the 241st American Chemical Society National Meeting in Anaheim, California on March 27-31, 2011. Three students gave oral presentations: Brette Chapin '11 spoke on "Asymmetric hydroamination of aminoallenes catalyzed by titanium and tantalum complexes of chiral sulfonamide-alcohols," Kanny Wan '11 spoke on "Concise, biomimetic syntheses of natural furanyl terpenoids," and Michelle Hansen '11 spoke on "Catalytic asymmetric hydroamination with tantalum complexes of chiral amino alcohols.
In addition, Adam Brown '13, Arthur Vasek '11, Cassie George '11, Daniel O'Neil '11, Hayden Hatch '12, Ha Seong Kim '11, Heidi Linder '11, Jessie Roy '11, John Cvitkovic '11, John Robinson '12, Karen Heinselman '13, Kristine Fong '11, Laura Collins '11, Laura Poindexter '11, Malous Kossarian '12, Mary Van Vleet '12, Millie Fung '11, Nagiko Hara '12, Thomas Aldrich '12, Thomas Avila '11, Veerasak "Jeep" Srisuknimit '12, and Zara Seibel '11 presented posters of their work in fields as far-flung as characterization of green surfactants, drug discovery, and new materials for solar energy conversion. Alumni coauthors included Caitlin Olmsted '10, Mark Cyffka '10, Chiara Giammanco '10, Nancy Eisenmenger '09, and Eric Nacsa '10.
The American Chemical Society is the world's largest scientific society with over 165,000 members. It sponsors annual meetings twice a year in 33 sub-disciplines of chemistry and allied fields. Roughly 14,000 scientists attended the conference to make 9,000 presentations in hundreds of half-day oral sessions and nearly 100 poster sessions. Interdisciplinary poster sessions and social hours attracted 3,000 attendees.
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Alicia Schep '11 has been named a Goldwater Scholar. Chiara Giammanco '10 was awarded honorable mention in the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship competition. Katie Near '10 won the Mindlin Prize for Innovation in Science with her paper Isolation of induced secondary metabolites from co-cultures of endophytic fungi. Katie worked in the laboratory of first-year Assistant Professor Katherine Maloney.
Fifteen HMC Chemistry students presented posters of their research at the American Chemical Society national meeting, held March 21-25, 2010, in San Francisco. These students were also the centerpiece at an alumni gathering held in conjunction with the ACS meeting on March 22 at the W Hotel in San Francisco.
Watch a synopsis of the Vista del Valle Elementary/Harvey Mudd College Collaboration in Science, Mathematics, and Writing, better know internally as The Lead Lab. First-year students at Harvey Mudd College are mentoring fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students at Vista del Valle Elementary School in science, mathematics, and writing. Our collaboration provides a hands-on experimental science project aligned to the grade five California state mathematics and science content standards for every Vista student. Specifically, we are measuring lead in soil from vehicle emissions throughout Claremont. The Harvey Mudd students reflect on the science, engineering, and social demands which brought tetraethyl lead to the market as a gasoline additive for over sixty years. This project exemplifies the Havery Mudd College Mission Statement and is made possible by funding from the National Science Foundation, the Ludwick Family Foundation, the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation, and Harvey Mudd College.
Nancy Eisenmenger '09 was awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. She will be attending UC Santa Barbara in the Materials Science & Engineering Department.
Amanda Hickman '07 has been awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. Amanda is studying organometallic chemistry in Melanie Sanford's group at the University of Michigan.
The American Chemical Society Division of Organic Chemistry has awarded Andrew Chung '10 a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship in support of his work this summer with Prof. David Vosburg. Andrew will present the results of his work at the Pfizer Global Research and Development site in Groton, CT in October 2009.
Nancy Eisenmenger ‘09, Ryan Pakula ‘09, Steven Pankratz ‘09, Trevor McQueen ‘09, Glennis Rayermann ‘09, and Tarun Narayan ‘10 presented a poster at the inaugural Gordon Research Conference on Renewable Energy: Solar Fuels at Ventura in January of 2009. The poster, titled “Metalloporphyrins: intramolecular coupling and injection efficiency on zinc oxide nanotube photoanodes,” also listed as authors Amenda Hickman ‘07, Professor of Chemistry Hal Van Ryswyk, and Vice President and Dean of Faculty and Professor of Chemistry Robert Cave, along with others from the Department of Chemistry at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
The Gordon Research Conferences provide an international forum for the presentation and discussion of frontier research in the biological, chemical, and physical sciences, and their related technologies. For over 75 years, Gordon Research Conference meetings have been recognized as the world’s premier scientific conferences, where leading investigators from around the globe discuss their latest work and future challenges in a uniquely informal, interactive format.
Watch Synthesis and Analysis in Sixty Seconds, a QuickTime movie outlining one of the experiments run in Chem 25, General Chemistry Laboratory.
Recent Chemistry Student Awards
Audrey Shur '11 Astronaut ScholarAlicia Schep '11 Goldwater Scholar
Ethan Sokol '10 Goldwater Scholar
Nancy Eisenmenger '09 National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship (UC Santa Barbara)
Karen Morrison '08 Goldwater Scholar
Recent Chemistry Faculty Awards
Professor Kerry Karukstis Joseph B. Platt Chair in Effective Teaching, 2009-2014Professor Karl Haushalter Iris and Howard Critchell Assistant Professorship 2007-2009
Departmental Accolades
RUGG'S Recommendations on the Colleges, 15th Edition, F. E. Rugg (1998) rates the Harvey Mudd College chemistry program as the best undergraduate chemistry program in the nation from a list of 56 most selective programs, which includes Caltech, MIT, Harvard, and Stanford. This rating is based on a survey of 732 secondary school counselors who responded to the question "Which college or university would you recommend to a student who asks for an outstanding place to major in a given field regardless of size, location, nature of the student, etc?-
In a rating of undergraduate college programs by Change magazine, the Harvey Mudd College chemistry program was the only one ranked among the top ten in five categories: overall quality of undergraduate education, preparation of students for graduate or professional schools, preparation of students for employment after college, faculty commitment to undergraduate teaching, and innovation of curriculum.
According to the Journal of Chemical Education, the HMC Chemistry Department ranks among the top five chemistry departments of predominantly undergraduate institutions nationwide in both the number of research articles published and the percentage of articles co-authored by students.
A Project Kaleidscope survey revealed that Harvey Mudd College is number one in the nation in the percentage of women students on campus who earn degrees in chemistry.
Harvey Mudd College's high overall quality of education has earned a ranking in the top three colleges and universities in California, according to a study conducted by Collegiate Information Services (CIS), of Riverside, Conn. Harvey Mudd College was ranked with Caltech and Stanford in the CIS study, based upon input from a random sample of guidance counselors at 800 high schools across the nation. In the survey, counselors were asked to rate the nation's colleges and universities according to their academic programs, leadership opportunities, personal attention from faculty, campus safety, and other factors CIS determined as pivotal to a quality education. The counselors gave HMC, Caltech, and Stanford the "highest ratings for overall quality of education in California."
Highly competitive national awards won by HMC chemistry graduates include one Rhodes Scholarship; 39 National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships (10 in the years 1994 to 1998); one Hertz, four Churchill, three Watson, and three General Electric fellowships.
Departmental Prizes Special prizes available for chemistry students include the Dotty and Art Campbell Prize, the W. G. Sly Prize, and the Harald V. Johnson Prize for the Effective Communication of Chemistry. In addition, HMC chemistry students have won the Mindlin Prize for Innovative Ideas in the Sciences, a prize awarded annually to the student author whose paper demonstrates the best innovative thinking in the pure sciences, in 1992, 1993, 1997, 2004, 2009, and 2010.
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