2014-2015 Faculty and Staff Activities, Part 2
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.
Back to Annual Report for 2014-2015