Adjunct Faculty Awarded for 10 Years of Instruction

Last week the Vice Chancellor honored Merilee Britt (pictured) and Jim Noffsinger for a decade of service to IU South Bend.  While we are very thankful for their loyalty, we are even more thankful for the excellent instruction they provide. Noffsinger, an application scientist at Bayer HealthCare, routinely teaches organic chemistry laboratories for the sophomore students while Britt, a science teacher at Penn High School, instructs freshman chemistry students in the laboratory. 

Adjunct faculty, like Britt and Noffsinger, are a vital part of our faculty and we could not teach all our students without them. Furthermore, evening hours (which full-time faculty usually don't enjoy) are just right for adjunct faculty looking for opportunities outside their standard profession - and this gives working students more flexibility to schedule classes. Thank you both for your dedication to IU South Bend.

Anderson wins the Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award

This morning Professor Gretchen Anderson was presented with the 2015 Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award. The committee responsible for the award remarked that "Gretchen stands out due to the amazing impact she has had on her advisees lives over the course of many years." Anderson has a variety of plans for students with different desires and needs. These plans go by the unofficial names below.


Associate Dean Monika Lynker adds that Anderson "encourages her advisees every step of the way, and helps them prepare for life after college whether that’s graduate school or a job ...[providing them with] an all-around and all-encompassing approach to academic advising, and the result is that her advisees in their letters all say in one way or another that they would not be where they are now if it hadn’t been for Gretchen.” Advising is just one of the many ways that Anderson contributes to student success outside of the classroom and our department is very thankful for her hard work as professor, scientist, and administrator.

Another biochemist for Montana State University

Angela Patterson will be going to Montana State University (Bozeman, MT) to pursue her PhD in biochemistry. On her interview, she was very impressed with the university, the biochemistry program, and the friendly faculty. She also liked the surroundings, even in March. Angela will go there already knowing people in the program; IU alumna Jaq Miller (2014 Biochemistry) started her PhD studies there last year.  

Angela graduated from IU South Bend (BS Biochemistry) last December and has been doing research with David Wilkes, Biology Department, on molecular motors (dyneins) that walk along specialized tracks within cells. Angela is also our 2015 winner of the Excellence in Biochemistry award. Congratulations on both accounts, Angela!

IU South Bend hosts the 2015 Chemistry Olympiad

The Chemistry Olympiad is a yearly event sponsored by the American Chemistry Society that begins at high schools throughout the country and ends in an international competition. Each high school nominates just two students and this year IU South Bend is once again holding one of the many national exams to find the best of the best.

The top twenty students from all over the nation will study together for two weeks at a summer camp at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado and then the top four will go to the 47th international competition in Baku, Azerbaijan. Students spent the morning taking written exams on campus, took a break for lunch, and finished with a practical exam in the laboratory in the afternoon. Laboratory supervisor Connie Fox and assistant Brenda Beatty prepared instruments, equipment, and chemicals for the competitors. More information about the competition can be found at the American Chemical Society webpages.

From Middle School to College

IU South Bend has a program called College Immersion Day in which middle-school students are invited to the campus to learn what college has to offer in the hopes that they will be motivated to stay in school, work harder, and consider IU South Bend for their future education. Professor McMillen has always been an excellent showman for our department and spokesman for the university in the various administrative roles he has filled, so it was no surprise that last Friday it was he that spoke to a group of young students from Jefferson Intermediate School.  His audience was an eighth-grade chemistry class and he got their attention early on by igniting a hydrogen-filled balloon as he routinely does in his organic chemistry class. Will we see any of these students in our department five years from now? No one can tell, of course, but if there was potential interest, then surely McMillen tapped it and lit a spark!

Science Trivia Night

The IU South Bend chapter of the Tri Beta Biological Honor Society hosted a fundraiser on Feb 26 in the evening. Three teams of professors faced off in a Jeopardy-style friendly competition featuring questions from biology, chemistry, and physics with pizza and soda for all who came. Tri Beta organized the three teams as Anderson-Bushnell (Biochemistry-Biology), Marr-Marmorino (Biology-Chemistry), and Davis-Wilkes (Physics-Biology). Professors Davis and Wilkes won the contest with the closest (11) to correct answer (10) for the final question "How many dimensions does string theory predict?" Thanks to all the members of the Tri Beta Society for their efforts in preparing questions and setting up the event (especially the dynamic emcee Umron Alkotob) which was enjoyed by students and faculty. 

A Bench Chemist’s Adventures in Pharmacopeia

On Presidents' Day, 2008 chemistry alumnus Danny Brooks gave a talk to our undergraduates about the pharmaceutical industry.  He is currently a process development scientist at Par Pharmaceuticals near Detroit after working for several years at Boehringer Ingelheim in Ohio. Brooks enjoys the sometimes high-pressure, but very rewarding, responsibility of making sure that drugs are developed in a timely manner so they can be delivered and used on schedule to the millions of those in need. Knowing his audience well - and not wishing to neglect any of his former instructor's specialties - Brooks highlighted aspects of pharmacy that relate to each of chemistry's sub-disciplines.  He also discussed the impact of various levels of education (BS, MS, and PhD) to job type and availability. With all of our full-time faculty being completely immersed in academics it was especially rewarding to have Brooks describe the ups and downs of industry. Also attending the presentation were two of this fellow 2008 chemistry graduates, Tina Shepherd (below center) and Jennie Polk (below right), and it was a pleasure to visit with them again after many years.