Wooster Chemistry Annual Report 2000-2001

FROM PAUL L. GAUS, CHAIRPERSON

As I write this, it is February 11, 2003, and it is snowing again in Wooster. We are having the kind of winter I remember, somewhat like the year 1977, when I started at the College. The College plows have banked five feet of snow in the new parking ovals in front of the building, and snow is forecast into the foreseeable future. It is both bracing and proper, and it lends a reassuring continuity to my memories of the last 25 years.

In other perhaps more important ways, however, Wooster has experienced great discontinuity, all for the better, I believe. There is new life in the department.

First, sons were born to two of our Assistant Professors, Paul Edmiston and Wingfield Glassey, and their wives Sheryl and Sara. A third Assistant Professor and his wife, Mark and Melinda Snider, are expecting. That's three babies in the span of two years. This is remarkable since only two children were born into our family in the last 25 years, and one of them was my daughter Amy, born in 1979. It is a new department.

There have also been notable retirements, beginning with Roy Haynes in 1999, and including Ted Williams (2001), Dave Powell (2001), and Montie Borders (2002). We have hired well since then, and at the moment, only three of us (Virginia, Richard, and I) are tenured. Thus, the ranks are filled with exciting new people whom I find, in every case, to be full of spark and fire for teaching, scholarship, and research. These are Judy Amburgey-Peters (organic, promoted to Associate Professor with tenure, effective August 2003), Paul Edmiston (analytical), Ellen Burns (organic), Wingfield Glassey (physical), and Mark Snider (biochemistry). These young people will have a profound impact on the future direction of our department, and I encourage readers to study their profiles elsewhere on this site.

As might be expected, with so many young professors on board, I am hearing one question asked repeatedly: "Why do we do it this way?" Good question; one we haven't answered too often in the past. Encouragingly, I find myself guiding broad discussions of our curriculum, and I expect that in the next five years or so we will put a wholly new program into place. Judy and Ellen have already begun work on the organic sequence 211, 212, and 313. Wingfield has had an impact on physical chemistry, working with an enthusiastic Virginia Pett. Mark is giving a new emphasis to Biochemistry I and II, and we have replaced the old biochemistry major with a new one administered by both the chemistry and biology departments: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. This would not have been possible five or six years ago.

Change, then, is the best thing about our department these days. We have just gotten comfortable in our new building. The curriculum is going to be modernized. New professors are stepping forward to carry the torch. I find myself invigorated like never before, and I believe the future is bright with prospects for our professors and students.

Very truly yours,

Paul L. Gaus
Professor of Chemistry
Chairperson