St. Lawrence University Chemistry Department

* * * Recent Chemistry Department News * * *

Fall 2008 -Mrs. (Martha) Dudley has returned for one more year ... before enjoying a well-deserved retirement! She recently received the Jack Taylor award... Students are currently presenting their summer research at Tuesday seminars in Bloomer Auditorium. Seminar Schedule will be available soon.. .We are back in regular session with a slight change in personnel. Dr. Ning Gao is on leave for the year, and we are pleased to have with us Dr. Kathy Kloepper!

Chymist Induction: Four students are receiving recognition by induction into CHYMIST, our local chemistry honorary. Criteria for induction are a minimum of six courses total in Chemistry/Biochemistry, a chem average of 3.5, and an overall GPA of 3.2. You may wish to congratulate them if you see them! They are:
Matt Millard, Hai-Yen Nguyen, Lauren Sischo and Ryan Wolfe. (9/5/08)

Summer Research 2008 - The Chemistry Department is a busy place this summer! Marcus Tuttle and Geoff Millard are working with Dr. Neil Law on a SLU Fellowship project continuing. Lauren Sischo (Merck Fellow) and Eric Clark (SLU Fellow) are working with Dr. Matthew Skeels. Dr. Sam Glazier is supervising Kristin Berretta (SLU Fellow) and Matt Millard (Strading grant) and Brian Palmer (Clark grant). On Wednesdays, everyone takes a break for a barbecue lunch and hangs out with other summer students and faculty over by Whitman Hall.

Fall 2007 - The following students were recently inducted into The Chymist Club, a local SLU Chemistry Honorary Society:
Jen Achtyl, Kacey Anderson, Nick Calandra, Derek Hansen, Shreya Kamath, Ariel Riezenman, Michael Seaman, Stephanie Walter, all of the class of 2008. Congratulations!

Three students - Stephanie Walter, Shreya Kamath, and Maia Moyer - gave presentations on their work in progress at a recent departmental Notebook Expo:

Summer 2007 - We have moved into our new location on the 3rd floor of Johnson Hall of Science! A number of students participated in summer research this year at SLU...(more info to be added soon).

Spring 2007 - SLUSAACS receives recognition. The St. Lawrence University Student Affiliates of the American Chemical Society,
receive their fifth honorable mention for their activities!

See the photo album of SLU Student Affiliates from National Chemistry Week 2006.

During 2006-2007 the Chemistry Department welcomed back Suna Stone-McMasters (SLU '90) to be our new Director of Chemical Stockrooms/Chemical Hygiene Officer as she and her husband returned to the North Country.

Several students were inducted into the local chemistry honorary, CHYMIST, during fall of 2006: Melissa Wells '07, Elizabeth Podhaiser '07, and Jeff McCartney '07. In order to be eligible for Chymist, (the name comes from Robert Boyle's The Skeptical Chymist), a student must have completed 6 semester units of chemistry with a GPA of 3.5, and an overall cumulative average of 3.2.

Dr. Ning Gao, Assistant Professor (Analytical Chemistry) receives grant. (read more).

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From the Watertown Daily Times, 5/30/06

Grant Awarded: Ning Gao, associate professor of chemistry at St. Lawrence University, has been awarded a grant of $32,059 as part of a $105,000 project grant, by the Cooperative Institute of Limnology and Ecosystems Research at the University of Michigan, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmostpheric Administration. The proejct is an ongoing study by her and other scientists of mercury contamination in Lake Champlain.

The project, titled "Coordinated Monitoring and Modeling for Mercury in Lake Champlain," will be headed by her. Among the collaborators is Thomas M. Holsen, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Clarkson University, Potsdam.

The grant will allow the expansion of a research project underway on mercury in Lake Champlain that has been conducted since 2000, led by Ning Gao in collaboration with a team of researchers in New York and Vermont. In recent years, a total of five one-year grants from the Lake Champlain Research Consortium, with funding from the National Atmospheric and Oceanic AdministrationCooperative Institute for Limnology and Ecosystems Research, have been awarded to the team. The researchers have developed and refined a mass balance model to account for the sources, sinks and accumulation of mercury in Lake Champlain and they have been able to identify some possible types and locations of emission sources that contribute mercury to the Lake Champlain Basin, via atmospheric transport and deposition. the research has led to several published articles on the topic.