Back to Annual Report for 2014-2015
David G. Alberg, 1993-, Professor. B.A., Carleton College; Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley.
It’s been a very good year both in the classroom as well as the research lab. During the Fall and Winter Terms I taught Organic Chemistry I, which seems (happily) to have become my routine fall/winter teaching assignment over the past five years. This spring I had a blast teaching Spectrometric Characterization of Chemical Compounds (“Spec-Char”) using our new NMR spectrometer.
Learning to use the new NMR – a Bruker Avance III 400 MHz instrument – has been a highlight for me this year. It was installed over winter break, and it made an immediate impact in our organic chemistry classes. The new instrument is fitted with an automatic sample changer, and with its ability to shim automatically (and very well), it is able to provide excellent spectra for each person in a 24-student orgo lab in a matter of about an hour. Those of you who ever struggled to shim the old Varian spectrometer may appreciate hearing that manual shimming is now an obsolete skill at Carleton. Add it to the list of things you can tell your kids about the “old days,” making their eyes roll when you tell them about risking carpal tunnel syndrome as you shimmed the old Varian with the mouse! Moreover, through the wonder of “pulsed field gradients,” a routine COSY spectrum can be acquired in about five minutes, so I think we will soon be doing 2D NMR experiments routinely in the orgo 2 labs. Of course, the impact was equally dramatic in the “Spec-Char” advanced lab. Where students used to have to reserve most of a day on the spectrometer for acquisition of their project data, we can now set up experiments for a whole class in an afternoon, and walk away! It has been great fun learning the many capabilities of the new instrument. This spring, Gretchen Hofmeister and I each spent a week of training at the Bruker headquarters in Billerica, MA. So much to learn!
In the research lab, Gretchen and I continue to collaborate on our organocatalysis project. Our goal is to understand how a quinine-based chiral catalyst mediates the enantioselective ring-opening of achiral cyclic anhydrides with nucleophiles, such as methanol. Our strategy is to prepare stable compounds that mimic the two possible enantiomeric transition states of anhydride substrates (transition state analogues, or TSAs). We will then study the differing interactions of the enantiomeric TSAs with the chiral catalyst using NMR methods. The ultimate goal would be to use information we glean from these studies to design better catalysts. This past year we worked with four outstanding students, Di Wang (’15), Fa Ngamnithiporn (’15), Katie Blise (’15), and Connor Hodges (’15). Connor made good progress on the synthesis of a key intermediate that could provide a means to easily make a variety of TSAs. Di and Fa each completed work on two different TSAs – resolving each into its enantiomers. This should be an exciting summer on this project because after about three years of synthesis, we are poised to do the crucial experiments. As I write this, our new research students this summer, Nathan Rockey (’16) and Clare Leahy (’17), are preparing to do our first NMR experiments with these resolved TSAs and the catalyst. Katie Blise had been working with us, in our collaboration with Dani Kohen, to study these reactions computationally, and we hope to compare the experimental results we collect this summer with Katie’s computational findings.
On the home front, it’s been a big year for graduations. Our son Sam graduated from Pomona College and two weeks later our daughter Ellie graduated from high school. Ellie is off to Occidental College this fall. Thus, Gretchen and I will soon become empty nesters!
Christopher Calderone, 2012-, Assistant Professor. B.S., University of Chicago; M.Phil., Cambridge University; Ph.D., Harvard University.
It is hard to believe that I’m already finishing up my third year on campus. The highlight of the year was a successful pre-tenure review; Carleton chemistry students are stuck with me for another couple of years.
I am continuing to teach Chem 123, Principles of Chemistry, Chem 320, Biological Chemistry, and Chem 321, Biological Chemistry Laboratory, and I’m excited to continue modifying and improving these courses as I go. There was a twist in Chem 321 this spring; I got to co-teach it with Ryan Steed, who brought his biophysical expertise to the course design. I got to learn along with the students some new experimental techniques that I’m anxious to bring to my research lab.
I also led a comps group on my own for the first time, hosting my former postdoctoral advisor, Christopher T. Walsh (Harvard Medical School), and studying his work on enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of complex natural products. Eli Danson, Jake Hassing, Michael Kane, Vayu Maini Rekdal, Libby McKenna, Billy Moua, and Di Wang all did a fantastic job distilling some really interesting stories out of 624 (!) papers that had come out of the Walsh lab over his career. It was a tiny bit nerve-wracking to be studying my former advisor’s work, but it shouldn’t have been—the group did a fantastic job.
On the research front, Natalie Kingston (’16) continued work characterizing an enzyme involved in the biosynthesis of the molecule ECO-0501. We hope to have a manuscript submitted on this work sometime early next year. Eli Danson (’15) also made some great progress on characterizing several enzymes involved in the production of a phytotoxin known as tabtoxin; Margot Manning (’17) will pick up where he left off this summer. Ahna Weeks (’15) also continued her work on rhizobitoxine; some of the preliminary experiments she did formed the basis for a grant proposal aimed at understanding the enzymes involved in enol ether-containing natural products such as rhizobitoxine.
Life on the home front continues as well. My wife Beth continues to teach at the Blake School in Minneapolis, Simon (5) just finished his pre-K year and his obsessions have evolved from sharks to dinosaurs, and Frances (2) somehow is interested in zombies, which is not weird in any way whatsoever.
Charles H. Carlin, 1966-2004; Charles “Jim” and Marjorie Kade Professor of the Sciences, Emeritus, 2004-. B.A., Carthage College; Ph.D., The Johns Hopkins University.
Medical and mobility issues have derailed my plans this year, especially for events like Reunion where I could keep up with chemistry alums now spread across the U.S. and around the world. If you have a spare moment, please send me a greeting and perhaps a bit of news about you (ccarlin@carleton.edu). I will be deeply grateful for your contact.
Marion E. Cass, 1987-, Charles “Jim” and Marjorie Kade Professor of the Sciences. B.S., Fort Lewis College; Ph.D., University of Colorado, Boulder.
During Spring Term at Carleton, I taught Inorganic Chemistry and team-taught the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory course with my colleague Gretchen Hofmeister. I also served as Zander Deetz’s comps advisor on a paper examining the molecular orbital descriptions of metal dinitrogen complexes, and taught a mini-course in Scientific Glassblowing to a handful of dedicated seniors. During the Fall and Winter Terms, I was in New Hampshire as a visiting scholar in the Chemistry Department at Dartmouth College, a member of the IONiC (Interactive Online Network of Inorganic Chemists) team working on the VIPEr (Virtual Inorganic Pedagogical Electronic Resource) Website, and a general contractor/construction worker on our energy efficient building. At Dartmouth I worked with graduate students in Professor Dean Wilcox’s lab to produce visualizations of the metalloproteins they study in their research. I also worked in the laboratory of Professor Emeritus David Lemal to synthesize a targeted ligand for use in my examination of twist mechanisms that racemize chiral forms of metal tris chelate molecules. With the IONiC team, I created images to be used as tags for searchable categories in the new redesign of our website. I also produced several “learning objects” for our website, all of which are listed in the publication section of this document. Most exciting for me is that I finally finished all the pieces that bring together the Journal of Chemical Education article about the synthesis, isolation and characterization of two chiral cobalt complexes co-authored with Michael McClellan (’13). Our manuscript titled “Improved Syntheses and Expanded Analyses of the Enantiomerically Enriched Chiral Cobalt Complexes Co(en)3I3 and Co(diNOsar)Br3” has been accepted for publication. Michael (currently a graduate student at M.I.T. in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences) and I worked on this manuscript via Skype during several of the major blizzards that hit Boston this year. We submitted our manuscript just before I headed west to begin the Spring Term at Carleton (where I, of course, used the experiment in our Advanced Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory).
Steve, Ada, and I enjoyed living and working in New Hampshire this fall and winter. We had an even more beautiful winter than last year with lots of snow. We enjoyed cross-country skiing several days a week in the New Hampshire mountains. It was then great to be back at Carleton for Spring Term, and I loved working with Carleton colleagues and chemistry majors.
Joseph W. Chihade, 2003-, Professor. B.A., Oberlin College; M.A., Ph.D., Columbia University.
It’s hard to believe that this year was my twelfth at Carleton. It is true that time flies when you’re having fun. This year has certainly felt like one of the busiest so far. In the fall, I co-taught Chem 301, Chemical Kinetics Lab, with Dani Kohen. It’s always fun to teach this course, which connects so many different branches of chemistry, and it was especially fun to teach it with Dani. The fall featured several, um, discussions on our living room couch about things like interpreting reaction coordinate diagrams and determining rate limiting steps. We both learned a lot, and hopefully the students did too. In the spring I returned to Chem 234, Organic Chemistry II, teaching out of an exciting new textbook and re-jiggering the course as needed. I also taught in the Summer Science Institute (CSSI) for the second time last summer, reprising my “How Drugs Work” mini-course and working with high school students to try to express aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases from parasitic worms in E. coli. Trish Hare ’17 and Joe Willenborg ’15 were my able assistants during the program and also did bioinformatics and molecular biology work during the Spring Term and the early part of the summer so that things were ready to go when the CSSI students arrived. Joe continued his work during this academic year, learning new bioinformatics tools that we will use with this summer’s CSSI group. Another research project this year was spearheaded by Nate Livingston ’16, who is working with me and a colleague at the University of Vermont to understand the error-correction activity of alanyl-tRNA synthetases.
Much of my time this year has been centered on architecture, rather than teaching and research. The campus-wide Facilities Master Plan drafted last year concluded that expanding and improving the science facilities at Carleton should be a major priority. This year we have been carrying out the next steps in making that vision a reality, creating a “schematic design” for what new and renovated spaces would look like, how much they would cost to construct, and how we would use them. A planning group with representatives from all the science departments has been working with a team of architects who visited campus about once a month throughout the year. As the liaison between science faculty and the administration during this process, I got to attend most of the architects meetings with departments, programs, students and others, and consulted frequently with the Dean’s Office and others in the administration. Aside from now knowing the ins and outs of most of the spaces in the current and envisioned science complex, I also learned more about the exciting and varied ways in which science is taught at Carleton. Although compromises are always part of a process like this, I am thrilled by and quite proud of the work that has been done. These new facilities will enhance connections between scientific disciplines and between teaching and research, in addition to providing better and safer spaces for students to work, study, and interact. I’m looking forward to seeing these plans implemented over the next few years.
The other thing that has dominated my thoughts this year has been planning for sabbatical next year. I’ll be working in the lab of Catherine Florentz and Marie Sissler at the University of Strasbourg, in France. The members of this group are the world’s experts on animal mitochondrial aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases. I’m very much looking forward to working with them to pull together various projects that have been in progress in my lab over the years, while also starting new ones. Working out the logistics of moving the family to France for a year has been an interesting challenge, but we are all anticipating the adventure. I’m sure I’ll have good stories to share in next year’s report.
William C. Child, Jr., 1956-1990; Emeritus Professor, 1990-. B.A., Oberlin College; Ph.D., University of Wisconsin.
In the early years of our retirement, Nancy and I joined a number of Elderhostel programs and enjoyed them all. Later, our travels fell into no particular mold until recently, when we returned to Elderhostel, now renamed Road Scholar. Last fall we attended an excellent program centered in the San Juan Islands, off the coast of Washington. This summer, as I complete my twenty-fifth year of retirement, we will go to Vermont for a study of humanism.
In late May we celebrated our 65th Oberlin reunion, which was held on commencement weekend. Along with thirty classmates we socialized, attended talks and panel discussions, and enjoyed concerts by graduating seniors at the Oberlin Conservatory. The consensus was that it was one of our most successful reunions.
Here in Northfield, familiar patterns continued: bassoon practice and performance; Minnesota Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Opera, and Park Square Theater in the Twin Cities; and friendship and committee work at the Village on the Cannon.
Steven M. Drew, 1991-, Professor. B.A., St. John’s University; Ph.D., University of Colorado.
This year I’ve been on sabbatical in the lab of Bruce Parkinson at the University of Wyoming. I’ve been learning about combinatorial methods used to search for new photoelectrochemically active materials suitable for water splitting or carbon dioxide reduction. In addition, I’ve been working on an educational project to determine if lead halide perovskite solar cells can be cheaply and successfully assembled then studied at small undergraduate institutions like Carleton. I’ve also taken some time to trout fish, hike, ski, visit with old friends from my graduate school days, and travel the west with my family.
Last summer I taught in the Carleton Summer Science Institute (CSSI) for the fourth time and was a co-director again. CSSI is a three-week academic program that brings talented rising high school juniors and seniors to Carleton to take short courses and work on an extended research project. I offered a short course and research experiences in the area of materials chemistry. I also was involved in the Summer Teaching Institute at Carleton for AP chemistry teachers. It’s always interesting to work with the high school teachers, talk about chemistry education, and hear about the issues they face in their schools.
We were able to make some research progress this past summer. Peter Downie (’15) and Devin Oliver (’15) worked in my lab and assisted me with the CSSI program. They did a great job working out some syntheses and characterizations for another platinum containing material we are interested in studying as a possible benzene sensor. We came very close to obtaining our target material of cis-di-iso-butylisocyanidedicyanoplatinum(II). I hope to work on this project some more when I’m back at Carleton this summer.
Before leaving for my sabbatical last year I had the pleasure of presenting a Summer Tea Talk titled “The Chemistry of ‘Breaking Bad.’ What’s real and what’s fake.” This was a blast. The seminar covered some of the research my CHEM 113 students did last spring on the chemistry depicted in the first season of “Breaking Bad.” Our analysis showed that some of the chemistry depicted in the episodes was factual or at least based on fact then embellished for more entertainment value. It was a fun and educational experience.
Tricia A. Ferrett, 1990-, Professor. B.A., Grinnell College; Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley.
I had a fabulous teaching year. In the fall, I taught Thermo to a group of fun, inquisitive students who really pushed our limits – in a good way. This course is generally well developed. However, I have been trying to add more biophysical context. I continued that trend, focusing even more on the hydrophobic effect and its role in a number of compelling research examples. We read more literature papers, including a very elegant study from the Whitesides group (Harvard). By the end of the course, I feel like we had somewhat spontaneously created a strong, rich, new thread of conversation and readings to the course about the ubiquitous role of water in both climate and biochemical contexts. To quote one student who exclaimed near the end, “What I learned in this course is that water rules the world!” What a fun, intellectual ride.
Winter Term I co-taught Chem 302 (Quantum Spec) with Will Hollingsworth. We ran the same experiments, but experimented with a new reporting format that blends more seamlessly with our evolving work on writing in the major in Chem 301. We had the usual fun, and I enjoyed talking more with Will about how to stimulate better scientific writing from our majors.
In the spring, I taught ENTS 288, Abrupt Climate Change, for the fourth time. However, this time I changed up the term-long project to be campus-based and tied to the notions of contested space, land stewardship, and ecological design. The idea was to learn the science of abrupt climate change, and then design a future to deal with it – here on campus. This was a very ambitious intellectual and creative undertaking. There were days when I felt stretched well beyond my limits of experience. On those days, the students always helped pull us forward.
This journey was well supported by my involvement in the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) SAIL seminar program on “Contested Spaces.” In summer 2014, I attended a 10-day workshop at the foot of Pikes Peak in Colorado with my ACM project teammates Nancy Braker (Arb Director) and Ross Elfline (Art History). At this working retreat, we were led by three ACM faculty and worked with faculty teams from Coe, Colorado, St. Olaf, and Beloit Colleges. We eventually decided to focus on the Arb Office and surrounding buildings as the object of our design projects.
In winter 2015, Ross hosted a Danish design firm, N55, who taught a five-week course that focused on redesign of the Arb Office using N55’s ideology and approach. I attended about half of the classes and learned much from the N55 Danes (Ion, Till, and Anne) about how to do design and how to scaffold a large design project. I have always engaged in design processes myself, in science and in my artistic projects. This experience has allowed me to move the teaching of design into one course.
In Spring Term, my students worked in teams, over multiple stages of research and design, to ultimately write four design proposals for a new Arb Complex. We drew on the ideas of David Orr and Integral Sustainable Design, all new to me. Both the project processes, and the final design proposals, were great to experience, guide, and witness. We also put nearly everything created by students onto a website that documents both process and product for student learning, beginning to end. Thus, I was also playing with digital story…not unlike the exciting kinds of things emerging in digital humanities projects at Carleton and around the U.S. I also worked hard to invite students to bring their unique talents and passions to the project, and they did! If you are interested in seeing the website, contact me and I can share it. This entire project has me thinking deeply of “Design as a Liberal Art.” I hope to do some publishable writing on this theme next year.
On the service side, I was on the new campus LIBIT Committee this year. It unifies Gould Library and IT concerns. Very exciting things are happening in both these areas, and in collaboration. I continued to mentor fellowship applications in the department with Chris Calderone. Fall is busiest, when we worked with over a dozen Carls (mostly alums) applying for NSF graduate fellowships, Watson’s, and Fulbright’s. For the applicants I mentor, this is like an intense and high-stakes “short writing course with Trish,” as one alum said. I enjoy helping them bring their strengths and passions to their thinking and writing. I help them through the process of revision until they have clear, compelling writing that is almost always A+ in quality. It is interesting to think about how we might, or even if we should, help our course students reach this same level of writing quality – before they leave Carleton.
I moved into a new home near 8th and Nevada in December, where I live with my sons, Adam (13) and Alex (12), half the time. They are with their dad the other half. We have a new kitty named Jasmine; she adds much love to our home. We have a large new vegetable garden, along with the coolest new neighbors who helped us till it. I continue to run 5 and 10K’s; I have just joined a female Ragnar relay team for a race from Winona to Minneapolis in mid-August. I just returned from a fun trip to northern MI with the boys. The target was Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes, which we climbed! I will soon head off to Santa Fe for a two-week personal retreat that will include one week at Ghost Ranch in a women’s course on “Writing, Hiking and Yoga.” So, 2015 has been a great year, and it continues to get better every day!
James E. Finholt, 1960-2001; William H. Laird Professor of Chemistry and the Liberal Arts, Emeritus, 2001-. B.A., St. Olaf College; Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley.
I continue to devote a fair amount of time to helping seniors learn how to use computers and tablets at the Northfield Senior Center. I enjoy being able to use my smart phone to read whenever I have a few minutes, e.g., waiting for dental appointments, etc.
Travel activity included several trips to Ann Arbor. I had a chance to watch the Minnesota-Michigan football game in Ann Arbor last fall. It was a delight to watch the Gophers soundly trounce Michigan. I have used AMTRAK a few times. The train trip from Red Wing to Ann Arbor is pleasant and relaxing. The train from Minnesota to Chicago often arrives too late to catch the train to Michigan, so that adds a bit of excitement. If you miss the connection, AMTRAK will provide overnight hotel accommodations and send you off the next day on a morning train. In March I took the longest trip of my life and spent three plus weeks traveling in India, Oman, and Jordan. Highlights included visiting the Taj Mahal and Petra.
I have become a devoted duplicate bridge player. I find bridge to be a fascinating pastime involving considerable intellectual challenge.
Most of the tulips I planted last fall bloomed. For the second year in a row, I covered the tulip area with plastic netting to discourage the squirrels. It worked again, so I think I can claim to have developed a successful anti squirrel strategy.
It is a treat to hear from former students. My email address is jfinholt@charter.net. Please send a message when you have a minute or two.
Deborah S. Gross, 1998-, Professor. B.A., Haverford College; Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley.
By the time this Annual Report reaches you, the trip will be over, but right now, I am fixated on the fact that my research group and I are leaving for a 2.5 week trip to Shanghai and Beijing in just over a week. This trip brings together a variety of things, including work with collaborators at both Fudan University in Shanghai and Peking University in Beijing, with whom I have had the good fortune to work in the past, and Carleton’s receipt of a planning grant from the Luce Foundation’s Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment (LIASE), through which we received funding to travel this summer. I am sure that my three new research students will have an amazing time! Next year’s Annual Report will include more information about this journey.
The year that is just ending has been busy, with so many things going on it’s hard to know where to start. I have taught CHEM 230, Equilibrium and Analysis, to ~120 students in the fall and the spring combined, and found them all eager to tackle the highs and lows of detailed equilibrium calculations. In the Winter Term, I wasn’t teaching any term-long courses, but it still felt like I was constantly busy. Maybe that’s because in addition to courses for the department, I also had the pleasure of working for the past two years every term with the Young Chefs Program to develop materials for cooking and science lessons that they have created and tested in both the Northfield and Faribault Middle Schools, on their way to national distribution. You can check out their work at youngchefsprogram.org. It’s really incredible! I also worked throughout the year with the FOCUS sophomore cohort, advising their colloquium in which the students designed and carried out a research project into the air quality at the Northfield Middle School, with particular emphasis on how it is impacted by the traffic patterns of busses and the line-up of cars dropping off/picking up students. They are putting the finishing touches on their work right now, creating a journal-style presentation of their background research and their experimental results. During the Winter Term, and well into spring, I had the pleasure of co-advising a comps group with Dani Kohen, studying the work of Professor Marty Zanni from UW-Madison. A super-sized group of students including Katie Blise, Tamara Damjanac, Eliza Green, Isabel Han, Christian Hansen, Connor Hodges, Aurora Janes, Laramie Jensen, Fa Ngamnithiporn, Christian Olivares, Alex Polk, Kiera Wilhelm, and Molly Wootten took on the daunting task of making sense of the 2D-IR technique, with specific application to understanding the mechanism of fibril formation relevant to diseases such as Type 2 Diabetes, Alzheimer’s, etc. They did a terrific job gaining insight into Professor Zanni’s work, explaining it to their peers in the department, and having a productive and fun meeting with Professor Zanni when he visited campus in April.
In the research lab, I have had the pleasure of working with Aurora Janes, Ernesto Polania-Gonzalez, and Abraham Villarreal this year. Aurora worked on adapting a method to calculate the mass concentration of aerosol particles based on chemical composition, using material density information derived from our measurements of particle composition. Ernesto spent most of his time collecting and interpreting aerosol data sampled here in Northfield, and Abe’s work centered on using handheld portable instruments for particle and combustion-derived gas (CO, NOx) measurements, in support of the FOCUS measurement project described above. In addition, Abe created our group’s first mobile laboratory, hooking up a bike trailer to his bicycle and riding around Northfield sampling particle and gas concentrations. Very fun! This summer will be dominated by the trip to China and related projects, as well as the beginning of a collaborative project with Professor Chris Hogan at the University of Minnesota, and engineers from a company in the Twin Cities that makes aerosol measurement instrumentation, MSP Corp. We will be developing and testing a new inlet for chemical analysis of aerosols by electrospray-ionization mass spectrometry! More news on this next year, I hope.
I have also spent time this year working on developing a curricular module as part of the InTeGrate program run by the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) here at Carleton. I am working with a team to develop a set of curricular resources to help students in any course develop more sophisticated skills in thinking about complex systems. We are in the final revisions before piloting the material next year, which will be an adventure, to say the least! I look forward to continuing the collaboration with my systems-thinking colleagues, and to learning the best ways to implement the curriculum we are developing.
Otherwise, it was a quiet year on the home front – we’re still recovering from the kitchen remodel, so didn’t take on any major projects except adding in a lot more native perennials in the garden. Between us, Markus and I have visited many countries this year, and we had a lovely vacation in Hawai’i over spring break. We’re looking forward to some more interesting travel in the next year.
Gretchen E. Hofmeister, 2002-, Professor and Chair. B.A., Carleton College; Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley.
The courses that I taught this past year were Organic Chemistry I in the fall, Organic Chemistry III in the winter, and Laboratory in Advanced Inorganic in the Spring Term. Organic I was a pleasure, as always; Dave Alberg and I continued to tweak our new experiment in enantioselective organocatalysis for that course. In Organic III, I re-introduced a section on olefin metathesis and olefin metathesis polymerization. Another highlight was reading a paper that described an elegant application of linear free energy relationships to evaluate the efficiency of organocatalysts. I taught the inorganic laboratory alongside Marion Cass, where we continued to use a new cobaloxime synthesis for preparing ethyl and benzyl derivatives of organocobaloximes, in addition to the butyl and isobutyl variants that we have been able to make cleanly for several years.
As Dave Alberg mentioned in his report, we acquired a new Bruker 400 MHz NMR spectrometer, funded by the NSF. Installation took place in December, and the new instrument has revolutionized how we acquire spectra in the department. Normally, because of advanced labs running concurrently with Organic II in the Spring Term, scheduling instrument time has been problematic and spectral acquisition slow. This year, because of the instrument autosampler and the ability to queue experiments, we experienced no back-logs, even with research students and faculty working full tilt. In a word, the new instrument is fabulous! Dave and I went for training in May, and we are now using the spectrometer to measure diffusion coefficients as proxies for molecular size, experiments that were impossible on our old instrument. It has been exciting and fun to learn new applications and to try to utilize the full potential of this state-of-the-art instrument.
In research, Dave and I continued our collaboration in organocatalysis, which involves using small chiral organic molecules as catalysts for stereoselective organic transformations. This past year, Fa Ngamnithiporn (’15), Connor Hodges (’15), and Xiaodi (Di) Wang (’15) worked on our project synthesizing stable transition state analogues (TSAs) for the asymmetric desymmetrization reaction (ASD) of cyclic anhydrides. We are now using NMR spectroscopy to measure TSA-catalyst interactions, in order to better understand the forces responsible for enantioselectivity in this reaction. Nathan Rockey (’16) and Clare Leahy (’17) have joined us in this effort; they are supported this summer by a grant from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund. At the same time, we have developed computational models of this reaction, in collaboration with Dani Kohen. Katie Blise (’15) worked on this aspect of the project over the past two years, and she has succeeded in identifying the transition states for our desymmetrization reaction leading to each enantiomer. We are currently writing up these results, along with some results from an earlier project.
This was my final year as chair of the department; I am looking forward to stepping down and spending more time teaching. I also served on the Science Planning Group, a committee of faculty and staff from multiple departments that has been heavily involved in planning a new integrated science facility. In addition, I served as co-director of Carleton’s HHMI grant and co-chair of the Science Board at Carleton. I am also chair of the American Chemical Society’s 2016 Organic Exam Committee. This involves recruiting and managing a group of organic chemistry faculty and textbook writers to compose an exam that will be used by faculty and programs across the country to assess student learning of organic chemistry in a variety of contexts. The exam-writing process takes place over a one-year period and involves conversations about the course content and skill development that are important for students in organic chemistry. Although it is a lot of work, it is stimulating to work closely with other educators who are interested in the teaching and learning of organic chemistry.
By the end of August, both of our children will formally be adults. Sam graduated from Pomona College this spring, and he is now on a cross-country road trip to an unspecified west coast destination, where he will settle down and look for a job. Ellie graduated from high school, and she will attend Occidental College this fall. We are trying to squeeze in some summer trips with Ellie, in between summer research responsibilities and her work at the local Humane Society, before driving her out to L.A. As empty nesters, I hope that Dave and I will find other interesting ways to fill our time, in addition to working hard at the job that we love.
William E. Hollingsworth, 1986-, Professor. B.S., B.A., University of Texas, Austin; M.S., Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley.
In the summer, I taught for the third time in CSSI, the Carleton Summer Science Institute, which is an intense three-week program. This time, 12 fun and engaged high school students worked with me and Rowan Matney conducting research on a range of environmental chemistry topics. These topics included measuring variation in the levels of nitrate ion in Lyman Lakes through different places and days, and finding levels of lead in biomatter for material grown near a house known to have high levels of lead in the soil.
I taught a pretty typical sequence of courses across the year—Principles of Environmental Chemistry, Quantum Chemistry, Advanced Spectroscopy Lab, and Lasers and Spectroscopy (with lab). I also ran a for-fun section of Statistical Mechanics for nine eager physical chemists in the fall. I was able to run a section of the laser lab as well, and the fun group of five (Nora, Kirstin, Hikaru, Demi, and Aurora) did great work on a range of projects. An unfortunate consequence was that the Nd-YAG laser broke early in the term before it could be used. Luckily, there were many other projects already planned. Coincidentally, it had already been arranged for us to work some over in physics’ optics lab—after all of these years, they finally trust a chemist enough to let them loose in their space! Our mission, started but not finished, was to collect all of their unused lasers for evaluation. At this point, the nitrogen laser is working just fine, and in fact proved to be a valuable short-term replacement for the YAG laser.
In the fall and winter, I also supervised a comps group with a focus on climate studying the possible feedbacks of methane on the current carbon cycle. The group—Sam, Peter, Nikhil, Nathan, Molly, Kyle, Kit, Devin, and Arafat—proved to be an independent and feisty group, giving a terrific presentation at the end of the project. Campus activities included joining a faculty group in the fall reading a great book, Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez, who then spent time with us at the end of the project.
Research activities this year included working with Anthony Cava during the winter break in preparing some updated LabVIEW programs for running our data-collection-and-management programs. This summer, fortuitously with no students, will be devoted to fixing or replacing the YAG laser—did I mention that the laser is currently BROKEN!?
A few pedagogical projects are currently underway. In the summer, I went to sunny, exurban Grand Rapids, MI, to attend the Biennial Conference in Chemical Education where I gave two talks: one on the design of my introductory environmental chemistry class, and the other on how we have started running formal analysis workshops in conjunction with our big spectroscopy labs in Chem 302. I am also working with alum Renee Frontiera, now at the University of Minnesota, and Kiera Wilhelm preparing a paper to help bridge the knowledge gap between the learning of chemistry and spectroscopy and the implementation of nonlinear methods in femtosecond spectroscopy.
Julie Karg, 1988-, Chemistry Technician. B.S., Mankato State University.
Due to a superabundance of work, this past year has been very demanding and stressful. So much so, I have had difficulty remembering things, thinking clearly, and getting a peaceful night’s sleep. Many changes, implemented both on-campus and off-campus, have created considerable inexhaustible additional work, both currently and into the future. The college’s adoption of a new chemical inventory system necessitated the purging and rearrangement of many reagents, of which the department has several thousand, and more extensive tracking and labeling of all reagents. The modification of the department’s chemical waste disposal system requires the modification of all waste disposal procedures and documents. A new directive requiring standard operating procedures for all processes, particularly those involving students, has demanded the creation of numerous written documents. The conversion of the world to the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals necessitates the replacement of all of the department’s material safety data sheets and reagent label safety information. The implementation of all these required changes comes without any additional hours to complete these voluminous and time-consuming tasks, which unfortunately, will require many years to complete. Both I and the lab manager are doing our best to implement these changes in a timely manner, while trying to maintain our sanity. However, it is very challenging and stressful.
On the flip side, all the recent changes I implemented regarding the department’s gas products and vendors yielded a savings of over $15,000 in the first full year after complete implementation. This savings figure is expected to increase in the future.
Daniela Kohen, 2002-, Associate Professor. B.A., Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina; Ph.D., University of Notre Dame.
This year started almost as usual. I taught Introduction to Chemistry (Chem 122) and Chemical Kinetics Laboratory in the fall. (The unusual thing was that, for the first time, I co-taught the lab with Joe Chihade.) I then taught Principles of Chemistry with Problem Solving (Chem 123) in the winter. I love teaching all those classes as I find introducing Carleton students to “the wonders of chemistry” truly satisfying. I also supervised a “comps” group with Deborah Gross. The group studied the work of Martin Zanni, who develops 2D IR techniques and finds novel uses for them. Our group was unusually large (13 students!) but was able to do a wonderful job. “Doing” comps is always a great opportunity to learn great science along with our enthusiastic majors.
One of the reasons this year was unusual was that “my Posse” graduated. Every year since 2001, in partnership with the national Posse Foundation, Carleton identifies public high school students who have extraordinary academic and leadership potential but might have been overlooked in the traditional admission process, and places them in supportive “posses.” For the last four years I had the privilege and responsibility of being the mentor for a Posse cohort. I was humbled by their tenacity and ability to learn and grow. A few weeks ago they left Carleton, with a well-earned diploma and ready to “conquer” the world. I am so incredibly proud of them.
My research group continues to make progress. We use atomistic simulations to understand and characterize at the molecular level how small gas molecules interact with pure CO2 in the pores of zeolites (molecular sieves), and how this interaction changes in the presence of other gases present in the atmosphere. The goal of these studies is to provide a basic understanding of the processes that underlie the use of molecular sieves as filters to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. During the Spring Term (and unlike most Spring Terms) and now this summer, I have been able to focus my attention on finishing up the work spearheaded by two great students. Nathan Bamberger (’15) made great progress understanding the behavior of an interesting zeolite in which cations act as selective trapdoors for gases diffusing within the material. We are now working on a manuscript describing his work. Furthermore, besides my “traditional” research (that I described above), I continue to venture into the world of quantum chemistry using computational methods to understand the mechanism of the reactions that Gretchen and Dave’s group studies. Katie Blise (’15) gained some interesting mechanistic insights, and we are almost ready to write them up. This summer, unlike any other summer at Carleton, I do not have any current students working in my lab – only Katie and Nathan working from home. This is because my family is about to embark on an awesome adventure. We will spend the next academic year in France! We have never spent a sabbatical year abroad, and I am incredibly thrilled by the prospect. The lab I will be working at does wonderful research looking at materials that are similar to the ones I have been investigating here at Carleton but uses a much wider array of computational techniques. I hope to come back with a lot of new ideas and knowledge so I can keep engaging students in satisfying research experiences. I also hope that my whole family, especially Margo (almost 13 years old) and Sofia (almost 11 years old), find the experience of living abroad a source of joy and learning and not only challenges. It is an incredible opportunity for the four of us! I am so thankful to have such an awesome job!
Jerry R. Mohrig, 1967-2003; Herman and Gertrude Mosier Stark Professor of the Natural Sciences, Emeritus, 2003-. B.S., University of Michigan; Ph.D., University of Colorado.
This was a quieter year. For the first time since I retired I wasn’t in the midst of a major writing project and it felt good. About my only professional activity has been serving as a reviewer of manuscripts for the Journal of Chemical Education, which incorporates guided-inquiry lab experiments. I also thoroughly enjoy the regular breakfast meetings with Matt Whited, where interesting conversation about learning and teaching never falters.
The Cannon Valley Elder Collegium (CVEC) has become a major focus for me, as I was the Chair of its Board this year. CVEC is one of the many local activities that make Northfield a marvelous retirement community, which is garnering increasing national publicity. CVEC now enrolls about 650 seniors in its courses each year. In the fall I was a student in Jim McDonnell’s course on the poetry of Seamus Heaney and fell in love with the writing of that talented Irishman. This spring I taught a course on the history and chemistry of cooking, using Michael Pollan’s Cooked as a text. It was a fascinating challenge to teach enough about fats, carbohydrates, and proteins in a way that would engage my class of 18, some of whom had never had a chemistry course in their lives. We went from atoms to proteins in five hours, and it took all of my creativity and teaching acumen to pull it off. As one man told me, “I didn’t understand everything, but it was fascinating.” I will teach the course again in the Fall Term.
Last fall Adrienne and I spent a week in Vermont, mainly on the shore of Lake Champlain south of Burlington. We had a great time leaf peeping and seeing how the idle rich lived before World War I. I also began my cheese making education in preparation for teaching the Elder Collegium course. In late February Adrienne and I participated in a Road Scholar program in St. Augustine, Florida. It was fascinating, with probably the best teachers I’ve encountered on a domestic Road Scholar program. My only regret is that it was too cold to take an extended water tour of the Okefenokee Swamp in southeastern Georgia.
In June I completed a personal memoir on the early history of the Village on the Cannon (VOC) in Northfield, where we live. It focused on how we surmounted foreclosure in 2008-09, with emphasis on the importance of strong community spirit at VOC and our successful partnership with Home Federal Savings Bank in Rochester, which owned the mortgage on our unsold units. As the bank president recently wrote, “In this age of the polarized behavior of our public officials, it is comforting to know that good people coming together can still get things done.”
Life in Northfield continues to be good. I take time each week to be with friends, and the Men’s Group at our church is an important time of fellowship. I’m looking forward to renewing friendships with alums at the upcoming Carleton Reunion. Come see us when you get the chance.
Richard W. Ramette, 1954-1990; Laurence M. Gould Professor of the Natural Sciences, Emeritus, 1990-. B.A., Wesleyan University; Ph.D., University of Minnesota.
On the silver anniversary of my retirement I’m enjoying surplus time for reading, musing, writing, and Netflix.
A recent book that prompted musing and writing was “The Meaning of Human Existence,” by E. O. Wilson. One answer is that nature (or God, if you wish), was able to start with non-living atoms and electromagnetic radiation, and proceed through a virtual infinity of unpredicted (if it’s nature) mutations, to finally evolve creatures who have conscious and inquiring minds. Surely that’s the greatest story ever told. And, personally, I doubt it will be retold in a closely similar way elsewhere in the Universe, no matter how many bazillions of planets are out there.
To the related question, “What is the Purpose of Human Existence?”, there are now some 7 billion potential answers as folks navigate their lives. Many of these (call them the Better Angels), become smart, educated, caring and far-sighted, capable of cooperating for the common good, supporting long term survival of homo sapiens and spaceship Earth. Unfortunately, many others suffer ill-defined and uncaring purposes with varying combinations of ignorance, greed, terrorism, racial, religious and sexual bigotry, science denial, crime, and environmental destruction. Sadly, for a great many others who are trapped in poverty, misery and sickness, the dominant life purpose is daily survival.
For us 21st century denizens the urgent question is “What is the Future of Human Existence?” The ultimate answer is simple – atomization – when five eons from now Sol becomes a Red Giant, swallows what’s left of us, and dissociates all our molecules. Perhaps the only surviving evidence of our brief existence will be the plaque on Voyager-I drifting aimlessly and unappreciated through outer space.
On the short scale of decades, satisfactory survival will demand a lot of changes in mindset and behavior. It’s now established that “The Sixth Mass Extinction” of flora and fauna is well underway (Google it). We must replace coal with sunlight and desalinize ocean water. We must eliminate our grotesque overpreparedness for wars, our overuse of limited resources, and our overproduction of plastic junk. Inaction can be as harmful as bad action.
In his admirable tough love encyclical letter, Laudato Si’, On Care for Our Common Home, June 2015, Pope Francis deserves praise for his assessment of global woes and his exhortation for all humanity:
“We need to see that what is at stake is our own dignity. Leaving an inhabitable planet to future generations is, first and foremost, up to us. The issue is one which dramatically affects us, for it has to do with the ultimate meaning of our earthly sojourn.”
So, college graduates of 2015, let’s do the right things in your century, so that later in this millennium a best-selling book will be “The Glorious Triumph of Human Existence: How the Better Angels of our Nature Prevailed.”
Now, that would be the second greatest story ever told.
P. Ryan Steed, 2014-, Visiting Assistant Professor. B.S., Centre College; Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison.
My first year at Carleton was exciting, challenging, and exhausting. In the fall and spring, I taught Principles of Chemistry (Chem 123) and found out how much work is involved in conducting a course in ten weeks. The Fall Term was far from perfect, but the students adapted to me well, and I enjoyed those moments (usually in my office) when I could see students first grasp some fundamental concept of chemistry. The second time through in the Spring Term was almost as much work as the first time with all the modifications I made, but it was worth it to make the content flow more smoothly and logically. In the spring, in addition to Chem 123, I taught a super-sized section of Biological Chemistry Lab (Chem 321) with Chris Calderone and was able to add a biophysical experiment into the mix.
In the Winter Term, I had the opportunity to develop a new upper-level elective in Biophysical Chemistry (Chem 363), including an optional 2-credit advanced lab (Chem 364). With mostly senior chemistry majors in the class, I often felt that I was teaching students well out of my league. They devoured the physical chemistry of macromolecules, stepped up week after week to present case studies, and grappled with esoteric primary literature. In the lab, they explored the behavior of lipids and proteins and grew some impressive crystals of lysozyme.
This summer, Clara Ledsky (’16) and Rahul Uppal (’16) are joining me in the lab for a study of the structure of ATP synthase, the elegant ion-powered machine that produces most of the chemical energy in your body. Clara and Rahul are engineering cysteine into two membrane-embedded subunits of the complex and using thiolate crosslinking to measure the proximity of structural elements. Additionally, I am advising Morgan Raffray (’16) in a collaboration with Hassane Mchaourab at Vanderbilt University. Funded by a Kolenkow-Reitz fellowship, Morgan is piloting a project characterizing the structural dynamics accompanying the generation of rotary motion from the movement of ions through the ATP synthase complex.
Clara and Rahul will also assist me this summer with the three-week Carleton Summer Science Institute (CSSI) for high school students. We will teach a short course on bioenergetics—how cells harvest, transduce, and use energy—with a particular focus on the molecular machines that carry out these functions. We will also bring the students into the lab to experience how biochemists study these nanomachines.
This year has been an exciting one at home, as well, and kept with our tendency to cluster life milestones into short periods of time. In addition to moving across the country with my wife and two young boys, my oldest started kindergarten, and we welcomed a baby girl into the family in October. My first intro chemistry exam was written at Dawn’s bedside while she was in labor.
Matthew T. Whited, 2010-, Assistant Professor. B.A., Davidson College; Ph.D., California Institute of Technology.
This academic year was an unusual one for me, since I have been on sabbatical the whole time, with generous support from the Dean’s Office. Although I have been around campus most of the year, the sabbatical has made for a substantially different schedule from the usual. On the teaching side, I was able to refine some of my activities from last year and post them to the Virtual Inorganic Pedagogical Resource (VIPEr) website, where I have continued to serve as a reviewer and administrator. As I have focused more than usual on research activities, I have also been picking a number of papers for my Organometallic Chemistry class in the fall, and I am excited to include some more recent pieces from my own research program this time around. I also served on the IN16 committee, creating the first ACS “Foundations of Inorganic Chemistry” exam, and anyone who is familiar with my love of ChemDraw will not be surprised that one of my roles on the team was to create all of the chemical renderings and several other graphics for the exam. My most significant investment of time on the teaching side was in beginning a study group on course-based research experiences in STEM fields. The group consists of Carleton representatives from all science departments, and we are gearing up to run a winter-break workshop on this topic at the end of the year. I am really excited about the sorts of ideas that have surfaced through the group, and working on developing and assessing student research experiences as part of regular coursework is likely to be a key area of interest for me in the coming years. Finally, I was happy to be able to continue organizing seminars with Dani this year and helping Dave and Gretchen get the new NMR spectrometer (!!) fully operational.
On the research side, I was able to work with a great set of students: Christian Olivares ’15, Zander Deetz ’15, Eliza Green ’15, Binh Nguyen ’16, and Lisa Qiu ’16 worked with me last summer, and they all continued their projects to one extent or another during the academic year. More recently, Margaret Schaff ’16, Teddy Donnell ’17, and Kathryn Peneyra ’17 have joined the lab on a variety of projects. As always, it’s sad to say goodbye to great researchers, but we are excited for our graduating seniors to take their next step (see “The Class of 2015” for more details)! We have made great progress in a number of areas, publishing our first paper on coordinatively non-innocent silyl pincer complexes with Zander, Dan DeRosha ’13, and Joe Boerma ’13, as well as a nice article on rhodium silylamide reactivity with Lisa and Alex Kosanovich ’14. We have really hit our stride in the lab, and there are more results on recent projects than I can discuss in this short space, which is always great and a testament to the phenomenal work all these students are doing. I recently secured a grant from ACS-PRF to support work on oxidative transformations with first-row silylamide complexes (Margaret and Lisa are spearheading this project), and over the next year I will be applying for money from NSF to support our other project as well as hopefully to get funds for a single-crystal X-ray diffractometer to be housed at Carleton. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to travel quite a bit during my sabbatical to talk about our results at a number of research institutions and peer colleges (UMN, UNC, NC State, Davidson College, Caltech, USC, UCLA, Wisconsin, and Amherst College), and it was great to catch up with quite a few Carleton alums during my travels! I’ll be heading to Texas A&M, Indiana University, Williams College, and UW-Seattle next year, and I’d love to catch up with any Carls in the area.
After a busy travelling/research year, I am looking forward to a relaxing summer spending plenty of time with my research students and family and no conference travel. Our boys (James (3), and Drew (1)) are doing great, at least when they’re not provoking each other, and we are very happy to be feeling fully settled in Northfield after four years. Charlotte is still working in the grants office at Carleton with some great colleagues and, as you can imagine, it is awesome for me to have someone “on the inside” when it comes time to submit proposals. All in all, we are gearing up for another busy but wonderful year, as usual.
Bryan Whiting, Winter Term 2015, Visiting Assistant Professor. B.A., The College of Wooster; Ph.D., Cornell University.
It was an exciting Winter Term, as I taught my first and only course at Carleton (Organic II). January to March is probably not an ideal timeframe to start a daily commute from downtown Minneapolis to Northfield, but teaching at Carleton was well worth blustery roads and a few sluggish car battery scares.
I’ve taught Organic II previously, but it was a first for me to get over that mountain of content in only ten weeks. Luckily, I had great support from everyone in the department as well an excellent group of students. I don’t anticipate that most students will share my borderline irrational love of organic chemistry, but I hope I was able to interject a little unexpected fun into the expected stress and dread. As usual, I had a particularly enjoyable time teaching labs. I don’t expect many surprises to emerge from textbook preps, but multiple students isolated unexpected (and very clean!) products during the chalcone synthesis. Sorting out what exactly had happened and why was a nice highlight to the end of the course.
Since the end of my stay, I’ve moved into a new house in St. Paul and started a new job in the Corporate Research Laboratory at 3M. Leaving the classroom behind for the lab is bittersweet, but the Winter Term at Carleton was an excellent last hurrah (and my new eight-minute commute is simply sweet-sweet).
Lanhao Yang, 2013-, Laboratory Manager. B.S., Henan Normal University; M.S., Wuhan University; Ph.D., The Ohio State University.
Writing the Annual Report has been a good opportunity for me to reflect on what I did in the past school year. I am glad that the chemistry stockroom and storage space were reorganized last year. With the assistance of many students, faculty, and staff, a number of old and/or no-longer-used chemicals and equipment were removed from the stockroom and storage space. To embrace the new safety regulations, Carleton College purchased an online inventory system, which I have been actively using since last summer to manage our chemicals.
I am glad that I was able to assist some laboratories (e.g., CHEM 230, 233, 234, 301, 302, 306, 321, and 352) that I did in my first year. Practice makes perfect. Going through the laboratories for the second or third time surely made me a better assistant. Not only did I gain a better understanding of the laboratories, but I started to find better ways to assist the laboratories. In addition to the aforementioned laboratories, in this past year it was a privilege to assist new laboratories/experiments (e.g., CHEM 234, 301, 355, and 364) and work with visiting professors, Bryan Whiting and Ryan Steed.
As part of the real life, crises and emergencies are not uncommon on Tuesdays and Thursdays when chemistry laboratories are in session. I am grateful that God granted me resources, wisdom, and skills to resolve almost all of the issues in real time. I owe much of the success of problem solving to a number of talented undergraduates, faculty, and staff on campus. They indeed played indispensable roles in my job function.
In this past year I also spent a decent amount of time learning some of our instruments/equipment and writing/revising standard operation procedures (e.g., IR, GC-MS, UV/vis, HPLC, and fluorimeter). I hope in this coming school year I will also have time to learn a few more instruments and become more proficient in the maintenance and applications of our instruments.
Wendy J. Zimmerman, 1970-, Administrative Assistant.
In April I was one of three employees recognized for 45 years of service to the college. The job has changed a lot during that time but not too much in recent years. In addition to regular office duties, I continue to be the editor of this report and “The Weekly Beaker,” the department’s weekly newsletter, and I manage the department’s website.