The experiences from different places,
I'm a physical chemist
and a spectroscopist,
but in the last 20 years or so,
I've shifted into nanotechnology and, uh,
work with sort of soccer
ball molecules. These days.
Jamie Ferguson is our organic chemist, um,
with interests in ionic
liquids in green chemistry,
Laura Hainsworth in the lower left,
there is an analytical chemist and she
does a lot of studying of the environment
using chemistry to characterize critters
and plants and soils and water quality
and air quality. And Michael Lane, uh,
actually graduated from Emory & Henry
during my first year at the college.
Um,
and he's a materials chemist and studies,
the fabrication of
integrated circuits with a
goal of sort of
understanding how they fail.
And so by avoiding fractures
and faults and things,
you can make that an integrated
circuit that lasts longer. Um,
but one of the things that pulls us all
together is we all wanted to be faculty
at a school like Emory & Henry
because of the opportunity to work with
students. Um,
what our students do with their
chemistry major varies a lot.
Um, and they fall into three broad groups.
Um, about one third goes to professional
school in the health sciences.
And by far, most of those
go to pharmacy school, um,
about 40% end up being employed,
either in the chemistry
industry or in education. Um,
we usually have a teacher or
two every year or two, and,
uh, the rest about 27%
go to graduate school.
And most of those go to graduate
school in engineering or chemistry.
Um, uh,
the biology ones are mostly people
who were biology, chemistry,
double majors, um,
some other interesting things we're the
oldest chemistry program in Southwest
Virginia, um, for our size,
I feel like we have the most chemistry
sort of teaching awards probably in the
state of Virginia, certainly
on a percentage basis. Um,
we've won national and
regional awards. Um,
another interesting thing is a group
of alumni from the college feels that
undergraduate research is so important
that each year they chip in thousands of
dollars to support students
doing summer projects.
And that's a really neat program that's
been going on for more than 25 years.
It started right before I came to
the College and it really provides an
opportunity for students to get out
and see chemistry in the real world.
And, uh,
one last thing I'll mention is
the Bartlett Crow field station,
which is a 72 acre field station,
about 15 miles from the college.
And that's where a lot of the
environmentally oriented projects happen.
It's a neat, uh,
facility because it's along the South,
our middle part of the Holston River.
And it has a lot of different ecological
sort of areas from deciduous forests to
fields, to, uh, you know,
watershed sort of marshy areas.
And so there's a lot of opportunities
for measuring things in the environment
and characterize it,
the biology department and
the environmental studies
department also uses it a
lot. Um,
and so that's really what
I had prepared. You know,
I think the fun part about sciences,
you get to answer interesting
questions and, um,
as the little cartoon shows, you know,
I probably am very much in the, I
wonder if it does that every time box,
um, just can't resist trying
to learn more about things.
So I'd be happy to answer any questions.
And if you think of questions later,
that that I don't have time
or don't get to answer,
be sure to send me an email or send Scott
an email and we'll make sure they get
answered for you.
Absolutely. So we're going to open this
up for questions. So please feel free.
I saw that we've got Cody here. We
actually had Hunter come in as well.
So please feel free to use the chat box.
So enter any questions
that you might have. Oh, well,
I'll open it up for you guys now. Okay.
So one question that I see says,
what are some internships or shadowing
opportunities that chemistry students can
do? And usually in chemistry,
it depends on what your career
goal is for pharmacists.
A lot of times they do shadowing. Um,
and usually they do, uh,
with someone who's sort of been nurturing
their internship and pharmacy often,
although there are a lot of alumni
who are involved in pharmacy nearby,
so it's possible also
to do it locally, um,
in the sciences, there's a lot
of summer programs for students.
They're usually about 10 weeks long.
They're usually paid and students apply
for those and our students have been
real successful in doing
and participating in those.
And then there's also the
friends of the sciences,
which supports students to do those
sorts of things in the summer,
because sometimes it can be hard to get
into some of the summer programs cause
they're very competitive. Um,
we also do projects with
students on campus, um,
and those, uh, often
happen during the year.
Sometimes they're for academic
credits sometimes, um,
there's paid opportunities.
It just kind of depends on the
professor and the situation.
I guess one question I
would have to ask is,
so what are the general acceptance rates
in graduate level programs for many of
our graduates that leave with,
from our chemistry department?
Um, so if I pop back,
am I still, I'm still, so if I pop back,
uh, let's see, basically
it pretty much works out for
everyone who's put together,
I guess,
we've had one or two students over
the years who have taken a year to get
some more experience and then
reapply. But other than that,
everyone's pretty much gotten
into one of their main choices.
Um, this coming year,
we've got two students one's going
to pharmacy at ETSU and another
one's going to the chemistry graduate
program at University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill. And, uh,
and I think he's both excited
about the chemistry program.
And he's also excited about
student basketball tickets. Right.
There we go.
We have another question
here. So let's see,
do you have a minor,
a minor with chemistry
and building off of that?
What are some common minors that
chemistry majors tend to have?
So we do have a minor in
chemistry. It's six courses. Um,
the chemistry minor,
there you take general chemistry
one and two organic chemistry one.
And then after that, there's
some flexibility depending
on your interests. Um,
a lot of times, because
if you double major,
that's usually eight chemistry courses.
A lot of times students doing the minor
will during their junior year think,
well, I could just take a little more
in double major and that happens fairly
regularly. Um, chemistry students,
it depends a lot on their interests. Um,
the most common minor
is probably biology. Um,
and that would probably be the health
science students that do that the most
often or the students interested in,
in what I think of as tiny biology,
micro or molecular sort of cell biology.
Um,
math is also fairly common and physics
is common for the students that are more
interested in engineering. Um, but
you can really minor in anything.
And that's one of the neat
things about Emory & Henry. Um,
you know, years ago,
one of my students was a double
major in religion and chemistry.
And as she graduated,
she decided to go to divinity school
and I sort of sat her down and I said,
you know, when you go to divinity school,
there's not going to be a lot of science
students there and you're going to have
to, you know, sort of go easy on them.
And she contacted me later at the
alumni event and sort of said,
you know,
there were a lot of scientists in divinity
school and she was sort of surprised
and, uh, she's a pastor at
a Methodist church now. And,
uh, and so, you know,
depends on the student and
what your interests are.
There's a benefit. Absolutely.
Let's see. So what,
so what sort of thing?
Oh, wait, there's more,
so what sort of things are you
guys interested in Hunter and Cody,
do you know at this point,
so lab work, do you have,
do you know where you'd like to
do lab work or just in general?
Just in general. Yeah. So a
lot of times for lab work,
um, we've had students go, um,
Eastman Chemical is probably the largest
chemistry employer in the immediate
region. They're located
in Kingsport, Tennessee,
which is about a 45 minute
drive or so from the college.
And, um, and they tend to
start people out in their
analytical sort of services lab,
but they're such a big place that
they tend to move people around. Uh,
I think both to give them
different experiences and
find a good fit and to keep
them from getting bored. Cause sometimes
lab work can be a little repetitive.
Um, but the people are students that
have gone there really liked it. Um,
paleontology is a fascinating,
um,
sort of feel to have a
chemistry background in both
from a preservation sort of
way and figuring out what's going on. Um,
I don't know a lot about it. Um,
although I did do a lot of soil work
and marine sediment work years ago,
uh, that was a lot of fun.
And you can learn a lot about
what's going on with things you, um,
dig out of the ground using chemistry.
I hadn't even considered paleontology.
That is interesting. Yeah.
What kind of, is there a certain type
of paleontology you're interested in?
Yeah.
One other thing about paleontology
is we actually have in our biology
department, a, um, Oh,
I forget what the exact word is,
but basically someone who
studies fish fossils, um,
Professor Felix does a lot of work on,
uh,
prehistoric sort of fishes and has been
on digs in the United States and Mexico.
And uh, and when you go into his office,
the first thing you see is the
shelf full of fossils and uh,
preserve museum samples. Um,
yeah. And one of the other
neat courses he teaches is a,
uh,
a drawing course because being able to
represent sort of paleontological sort of
samples, um,
is really important for characterizing
them in classifying them.
Um, yeah,
I can kind of come in hand to,
for what potential internships could
look like actually coming out of the
department as well, too. Yeah.
He, um, well actually
both professor in biology,
both professor, um, Felix,
who does a lot of work with
fish and eel fossils and, uh,
Professor Ayrgros, um,
does it's working on this
project where he goes,
I think mostly he has connections with a
couple of museums up in Boston and he's
been going through their
collection of animal,
I guess it's not fossils, it's animal
bones, but then looking at how,
where they've had breaks and how
they've healed and that sort of,
those sorts of outcomes
for their wildlife.
So that's not quite really paleontology,
but it's a still working with museums
and things building off of that.
Um, I do know that some departments have
a lot of opportunities in regards to
studying abroad. Um,
in particular I know biology has had
some with that now is there, for example,
one opportunity over another that you'd
recommend for your chemistry majors.
Um, so
there's short answer is any opportunity
to study abroad is one you should we'd
encourage and work with you to
get the classes to work with. Uh,
chemistry majors have studied abroad. Uh,
we don't have a specific study
abroad trip in the chemistry program.
Um,
the two they most often take are
there's the biology trip to Panama.
Um,
that's a tropical biology course and
there's also an environmental studies trip
also to central America
that they take. Um,
but we've had chemistry
majors go on a trip to Rome.
Uh, that's focused on
Renaissance art, we've had,
uh, another student who spent a
semester in Argentina and she's, uh,
in graduate school now,
but she really enjoyed going
to Argentina for a semester.
We've also had some students go abroad
as part of their summer research.
Um, one of our students, Gavin Irvine, uh,
did a friends of the sciences experience
in Spain and then after he graduated.
So he did that the summer
of his junior year.
And then after he graduated,
he's sort of took a gap year and now
he's finishing up his PhD at a university
in Scotland. And last summer,
one of our students also on a friends of
the sciences scholarship actually went
to Scotland and spent the summer working
with him and then Rice will be back in the
fall.
So we don't have a necessarily
a set opportunities,
but there are lots of opportunities.
Um, when I was an undergraduate student,
I was fortunate to study abroad in
West Africa and that was a lot of fun.
Um, and I learned a lot of things,
not so much about chemistry,
but about the world.
And it gives you a lot of
perspective on how things work.
That's excellent. Well,
I'll see, I say, does it,
um, does anyone have any other
remaining remaining questions
before we maybe end things out here?
Okay. Well,
I don't think I've seen any
more questions coming up.
So to that end,
I will definitely say thank
you very much. Um, Dr.
Duchamp, this has been very informative.
Give us an idea about
the department and um,
thank you everyone for coming today.
Nice to see y'all. Thank you very much.
Alright.
