Chemistry at Delaware

Although the quest for educational excellence has characterized our Department since its beginning, our thrust into national prominence as a major source of chemistry graduates has taken place during the last two decades. We have ranked in the top 25 U.S. producers of American Chemical Society-certified B.S. chemistry graduates for eighteen consecutive years.

We have produced a total of 725 baccalaureate degrees in chemistry (B.S. in Chemistry, B.S. in Biochemistry, B.A. in Chemistry, B.A. in Chemistry Education) during the period 1982 through 1995. Of these graduates, ca 30% entered graduate school immediately following graduation to pursue advanced degrees in chemistry or chemistry-related disciplines. Fully one-third of the 1347 baccalaureate degrees in chemistry awarded by the U of D since 1959 have been earned by women (women account for 40% of our 301 current chemistry/biochemistry majors, with a majority of our biochemistry majors being female).

Our Department, along with the Chemical Engineering Department, attracts and graduates extremely capable students, especially in our Honors Program. This is exemplified, at the input end of the educational pipeline, by the extraordinarily high performance level of CHEM-112 chemistry, biochemistry, and chemical engineering majors on their American Chemical Society standardized final examinations.

At the output end, two additional objective measures of excellence support the above claims. Five times in the past seven years, one of our graduating seniors received the ultimate undergraduate scientific accolade - a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship. Three out of four of our student participants received awards (two of which were first place awards) for their research presentations at the 1995 Intercollegiate Student Chemists Convention.

Undergraduate research is a very important part of our curriculum. Up to eight full-time research scholarships are available for our majors during the summer preceding their junior year. Our department was one of the founding schools, in 1936, of the Intercollegiate Student Chemists. Ours is the only department that offers a Ph.D. in chemistry that has consistently participated in the annual ISC Convention. Unfortunately, records for ISC awards prior to 1949 have been lost. Since that time, undergraduate students from 53 schools in the Middle Atlantic region have received awards for their research presentations. The 58 awards received by the U of D students is tied for 1st place and well ahead of 3rd place (38). It is by far the most among the participating schools that grant a Ph.D: the 2nd place here is 12. At Delaware, a strong undergraduate program coexists peacably with a growing graduate program; the two programs support each other rather than compete.

The prognosis for the immediate future looks even brighter. Our intensive recruiting efforts have produced a spectacular increase in the size of our incoming major classes for the past four years (46 in 1991, versus 81 in 1992, 106 in 1993, 99 in 1994, and 94 in 1995. In the scant six years of its existence, our B.S. in Biochemistry program has increased in popularity to the point that it accounts for as many new majors as our long-standing B.S. in Chemistry program. We recently received Faculty Senate approval for our fifth undergraduate degree program - a B.S. in Chemistry with Environmental Concentration - thereby beating, once again, the ACS Committee on Professional Training to the punch (we had our program in place before they approved the guidelines for it). Indeed, ours was the first program of its type in the country to be certified by the ACS.

Our Department has recently been awarded two major grants which have significantly benefited our undergraduate programs. A $1M grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute enabled us to develop a model program, NUCLEUS, directed by Ms. Victoria Orner, to attract and integrate minority undergraduates in the study of chemistry and biochemistry, introduce a new biochemistry laboratory course, and establish scholarships providing fully funded laboratory research experiences for majors in their junior and senior years. Minority representation is up to 10%, well above the University average (4.5%). A $150K NSF instrumentation grant (PI: Professor Murray Johnston), coupled with matching funds from Hewlett-Packard, has enabled us to modernize our undergraduate instructional program in the area of analytical instrumentation.

The legacy of Professor Theodore Wolf, the first U of D chemistry professor, has produced a chemistry/bio- chemistry faculty whose members have received seven Lindback Foundation/ Delaware Alumni Association Excellence-in- Teaching Awards (William Mosher, 1964; John Burmeister, 1968, 1979; Elizabeth Dyer, 1969; Burnaby Munson, 1973; Carl von Frankenberg, 1978; Henry Blount, 1981) and two national Chemical Manufacturers Association Catalyst Awards (Elizabeth Dyer, 1958; John Burmeister, 1981.) Widely adopted teaching texts have been written by Professors James Moore ("Organic Chemistry: An Overview, co-authored with T. J. Barton", 1978; "Experimental Methods in Organic Chemistry", 3rd edition co-authored with D. L. Dalrymple and O. R. Rodig, 1982) and Joseph Noggle ("Physical Chemistry", 3rd ed., 1996). In 1993, Professor Burmeister was named the University's second Alumni Distinguished Professor, "in recognition of his excellence in teaching and extraordinary commitment to students." In 1994, he was chosen as the State of Delaware's Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.

Research Facilities

The Chemistry and Biochemistry Department occupies the H. Fletcher Brown, Quaesita Drake, and Lammot Du Pont Chemical Laboratories, the latter having been completed in 1993. The south wing of Brown Laboratory was completely renovated in 1994-95. These connected laboratory buildings provide over 160,000 sq. ft. of teaching, research and office space and are fully equipped to meet the research needs of students and faculty. They contain a centrally located chemistry stockroom and electronic, machine, and glass-blowing shops that are staffed by full-time specialists.

The department is well equipped to carry out modern chemical research in three laboratories: Brown, Drake and Lammot DuPont. Construction of the last-named building was completed in 1993. The "Blue Hen NMR Complex" has seven NMR spectrometers including a Bruker 500 Mhz NMR spectrometer and three solid-state spectrometers. In the summer of 2001 a Bruker 600 Mhz NMR with cryoprobe will be added to this facility. We have four analytical mass spectrometers, a Nicolet FT-2000 Fourier Transform mass spectrometer, a newly constructed triple tandem mass spectrometer for MS/MS studies and a VG Autospec mass spectrometer. Other major instruments include two Siemens P4 four-circle automated diffractometers, a Varian E-109E ESR spectrometer, Nicolet FT- Raman spectrometer, Nicolet 800, 60SX 20SXB and 5DXB FT-IR spectrometers, lasers with picosecond and femtosecond capabilities, two molecular beam apparatuses, and two home-built ion cyclotron resonance spectrometers. The instruments are maintained by a professional staff.

Departmental instrumentation includes high resolution ultraviolet, visible, fluorescence, and atomic absorption spectrophotometers, CD spectrometers, numerous gas and liquid chromatographs, scintillation counters, automated amino acid analyzers, a peptide sequenator, preparative and analytical centrifuges, high-sensitivity calorimeters and other thermal instruments, and various other specialized equipment for the characterization of chemical compounds and the investigation of reactions.

Undergraduate Research

Many Chemistry and Biochemistry majors at the University of Delaware choose to expand their education by doing research. Most faculty in the department accept undergraduates in their laboratories. Many of our students have published papers or presented talks at scientific meetings on the results of their work. Up to eight full-time research scholarships are available for our majors during the summer preceding their junior year.

For information about the fields of research available, check the research page for the department.

List of projects compiled by the honors office.

General information about undergraduate research at UD.