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Welcome! This website is dedicated to the teaching, research, and activities of Rebecca L. Sanders, Ph.D.

Dr. Sanders is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. She joined NCC in 2014 and has been an active member in the science and environmental studies communities. She teaches courses in General Chemistry, Analytical Chemistry, and Environmental Chemistry. She has an active research group that is exploring organomineral interactions. Dr. Sanders has served as the faculty advisor for the Student Members of the American Chemical Society at North Central since 2016. In the past six years, the organization has been recognized as an Outstanding Student Chapter of the American Chemical Society for four times as a Commendable chapter two times! In 2021, Dr. Sanders was recognized with the Distinguished Teaching Award for Junior Faculty at North Central College. In 2023, Dr. Sanders received tenure and was promoted to Associate Professor of Chemistry.

Dr. Sanders grew up in Peoria, Illinois. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Bradley University (2006). It was her experiences at Bradley that developed her passion for undergraduate education and Analytical Chemistry. During her undergraduate career, she was a Physical Science Technician at the USDA ARS National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research where she conducted research on the cold-flow properties of biodiesel. Dr. Sanders also participated in an NSF REU at the University of Kansas. For her undergraduate work, she was elected to Bradley's Phi Kappa Phi Academic Hall of Fame and received the ACS Collegiate Scholastic Award and ACS Undergraduate Award in Analytical Chemistry.

She holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from The Pennsylvania State University (2011). During graduate school, she focused on Environmental Chemistry and Geochemistry research where she used solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) to study the reactivity of clay minerals. She received the Dan H. Waugh Memorial Teaching Award (2007) and student research grants from the Clay Minerals Society (2009) and the International Association of Geochemistry (2009). She also held leadership positions as co-chair of the Graduate Women in Science Voices Conference (2010), co-chair of the Environmental Chemistry Student Symposium (2009), and supervising teaching assistant (2007-2008).

After receiving her Ph.D., Dr. Sanders spent three years as a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University in their Department of Geosciences. At Princeton, Dr. Sanders worked on several projects exploring biogeochemical cycling of elements in a variety of environments including polar and temperate soils, lakes, streams, and oceans. She traveled frequently to national laboratories where she used x-ray beamlines for experiments to identify the speciation of various elements in natural samples. At both Penn State and Princeton, Dr. Sanders mentored several undergraduate research projects.

Dr. Sanders resides in Naperville with her husband (Bill), her daughters (Ella and Quinn), and their Havanese (Louie).