What students, faculty, and recent graduates say about Chemistry at Principia.

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"Everything we do relates to chemistry"

"Chemistry is a big part of our lives," says a senior chemistry major. "Everything we do relates to chemistry, and many things that we use are chemical; so, I figured that if I wanted to be environmentally conscious, I had to know about chemistry." One recent graduate, a chemistry and world perspectives double major, says, "Chemistry is involved in everything, and so is politics; they've got to overlap somewhere. The overall effect of my combining those two majors is that I feel confident I can handle whatever my grad school professors ask of me, whether it is working in the lab . . . or analyzing and writing up my results to eventually have published in a journal." A junior chemistry major says, "I'm interested in looking at chemicals in the environment and learning how to deal with those chemicals and finding solutions to pollution." A professor points out, "Chemistry is a neat place to be, because there is a lot going on ‹ acid rain, global warming, ozone layer depletion, nuclear energy, nuclear-waste disposal, hazardous waste; the list goes on and on."

Small classes yield opportunity

"I've been really inspired by the creativity expressed by the faculty in the classroom setting, because chemistry was so dry in high school. Chemistry is a lot more fun in college," says a senior chemistry major, who didn't like chemistry at all in high school. She will attend UC-Berkeley on full fellowship to study environmental engineering. "Due to the small class sizes at Principia you're encouraged to speak up, ask questions. There's a lot more interaction with the professors and opportunities to talk," says a recent graduate. "I was a graduate assistant at [a state university], and I taught groups of 250 people. My organic chemistry class at Prin had six people. I got used to interacting with professors one-on-one, and it got me used to expressing my ideas clearly when discussing things back and forth. I think that was really valuable, and it's certainly been a real keystone for my career and my success in grad school." A professor adds that the experience with student presentations will help not only in graduate school but also in the chemical industry as chemists share their findings with co-workers.

New science center

Principia's new science center has four chemistry labs. A professor explains, "We have a general lab, particularly for our non-majors and intro-level courses; an organic lab, with 11 hoods for experiments; an instrumental lab, which has modern instrumentation including a new ultraviolet visible spectrophotometer; and a senior/research lab for longer-term student projects. And we will continue to use the campus as a laboratory. . . ." A senior points out, "We do a lot of work on campus outside of the lab setting. We learn how to test water and soil, for instance, to see how the systems are affected by chemicals."

Dedication, discipline, and support

"It takes a lot of dedication, just like other sciences. It takes memorization . . . and a willingness to dive into the subject and really understand it," says a senior chemistry major. "Our chemistry students are working four or five hours a night, and that's challenging to them, being so disciplined while many of their friends might have less homework," says another professor. "It's a rigorous major." A junior adds, "It's not an easy major, but being at a small college, there's a lot of interaction between students and professors. . . . The major has taught me, among other things, persistence. I really saw that in a project I was doing involving infrared spectroscopy. It took me five or six times to get the sample just right. It got to be about one o'clock in the morning, but the professor was there helping me . . . we were working together."

Diversity of applications

A recent graduate now studying at Lamar University says, "The research I'm doing now in photonics will be very important to the construction of the next generation of computers. While I'm officially in the chemistry program, my research really includes physics, mathematics, and electronics as well." Another recent chemistry graduate is studying agronomy at the University of Maryland. As far as jobs after graduation go, "There are tons of them," says a professor. "Traditional jobs working for an oil or chemical company, like Amoco or Kodak, running samples, developing techniques; you could do wildlife sampling, water-quality sampling; you could do air sampling for the EPA. There are lots of environmental companies springing up right now; or you could work for a small consulting company or a government agency."