Highlights Spring 2020

COMMENTS from the chat box during our Virtual Celebration:

MANY family members in the audience declared messages like this one: We love you and are so proud of you! Special congratulations were offered to many graduates by name. It was fun to have so many family members attend! Thank you!

From Stephanie M Stathopoulos : Parents I’m feeling your pain. I should be down at Iowa State University where my son is graduating! Steph later added: I miss meeting all the moms and dads…to thank you in person for sharing your child with me!

From folks attending:

Congratulations Graduates, You are ending at one of the most unique times in History, your choice of studies can only help this world to get better.

Stephanie is a national treasure.

Congrats to everyone who is graduating and all of those who helped them get there.

I am so grateful for the opportunities to participate in research in the Department. It has been such a blessing to contribute to discovery and learn from graduate students and post docs. Special thank you to the Bhagi-Damodaran lab!! I've been missing it so much

Congrats everyone. Thanks for putting this together.

Thank you so much to Dr. Stein who was so kind all semester and handled the move to online learning so well that it felt like I was still learning from him in person! One of the most caring professors I have ever had and incredibly engaged.

The kindness of everyone here makes me want to be a chemistry major!

Highlights shared with us from our chemistry majors:

I am happy to be involved in research opportunities as it helped me learn outside of class

The quality of everything at this school is excellent

Lee Penn, James Johns, Connie Lu, David Blank, Thomas Hoye, and Andreas Stein all went above and beyond to make their students feel respected, safe, and valued. The department as a whole is incredibly supportive and helpful in seeking out research and other opportunities. Keep doing what you are doing! UG in chem was great.

I really loved taking the honors organic chemistry lab. It was a lot of work, but that was probably the chemistry course in which I learned the most.

Great research opportunities

Professors willing to mentor

Honors organic chemistry with professors Hoye and Topczewski. Research with Professor Topczewski.

I really enjoyed taking synthetic chemistry related courses and research. Joseph Topczewski was a great teacher who was clearly passionate about the topic. He was also a really good PI.

I think the honors organic chemistry lab course, as well as the honors organic chemistry sequence, has been the best chemistry courses I took. I feel taking all these classes together has helped me learn a lot about organic chemistry, and I also felt like an actual chemist when working on experiments in that lab course. I haven't been doing organic chemistry-related lab work ever since, but I think that course has helped me in other ways (such as scientific writing and confidence boost).

Instructors were incredibly friendly. All of the chemistry professors are very knowledgeable and friendly! It's easy to work with other students in the chemistry department to gain more knowledge and learn as a group.

AMAZING instructors, super available.

All-time highlight: In inorganic chemistry, Prof. Lu met me during the middle of one of her research conferences during her lunch break to help me with chemistry homework! She was the absolute sweetest professor and super helpful with getting students to succeed in her class.

I am touched by how the teachers are so willing to help students and work with them on things.

Compared to my other classes, almost all of my chemistry professors have been amazing. They have all been excited about what they're teaching and you can tell they care about their students.

There's a lot:

• Overall, I found the quality of instructors to be great. This, of course, may have been compounded by the fact that I was in the Honors program, but I've heard similar comments from other students. I'm particularly enthusiastic about the fact that many of the younger faculty seem to be going out of their way to improve their teaching by, for example, inviting in professionals to work with us students and provide pertinent feedback. I think this is a vastly underrated aspect of academia, and I applaud those efforts.

• Involvement/research opportunities were abound. My experience was rather limited in scope, as I worked almost exclusively in Prof. Hoye's lab throughout my time here. In general, though, I've found that the extent of undergraduate research is excellent. Moreover, it seems that these opportunities are by-and-large meaningful--no undergraduate I've talked to has been a simple glass cleaner. I think this goes a long way towards developing scholarly graduates. It may be a good idea to promote the scholarships/fellowships more, I felt that I lost out substantially by not being aware of those resources until much later in my career here.

• One fantastic aspect of the department's academic policies I'd like to mention is the availability of crosslisted (4000/8000) level courses. For more advanced undergraduates like me, I felt that these classes were the ones that really cemented my academic growth as a chemist. Looking at the available courses at some of my potential graduate institutions, it's likely I'll have already taken them, illustrating just how useful these classes are. I genuinely feel that these types of courses have pushed my knowledge well beyond the expected to levels that are genuinely exciting.

...one big highlight of this department is its openness to student feedback, this form being an excellent example. It's made me feel a lot more valued during my time here and like they're doing what they can to maximize the student experience. I appreciate it!

The advisors and professors want to see you succeed and would give you all the help that you need to make sure that you are on track to succeeding.

The willingness of every faculty member to engage with students and help them to succeed.

I think that the chemistry community here on campus is so well knit together. We all are huge supporters of one another and there is always someone who wants to push you to do your best.

Medicinal chemistry research under Courtney Aldrich broadened my view of research and helped me gain a better perspective on all it involves. I appreciated all I learned there, as well as the independence and confidence I gained in working in a lab and conducting my own projects.

I think that the Chemistry professors are extremely supportive and allow for a lot of great opportunities in classes and in the department.

The coursework are variety and useful.

The professors are nice and the research areas are covered almost all the branches of chemistry.

The senior advanced lab courses are challenging but interesting and useful since they are mostly like half self design research and practice a lot about experience real skills as well as writing and thinking ability.

The highlight of my college career is being apart of student groups and being in a college that combines engineering and science majors.

The instructors were great and the classes were engaging.

The organic chemistry program at the UofM was amazing. I absolutely loved the CHEM 2311 (it was probably my favorite class of all time). Although I did not take as many chemistry electives through the department as other students (a lot of credits from my MatSci degree transferred over), the chemistry facility I did have were some of the most helpful and approachable instructors at the U (especially Prof. Barany, Prof. Leopold, and Prof. Kass). In all my upper division classes, there was a lot of freedom to explore new synthesis methods and to dive-deep into chemistry.

Instructors are all very nice to help me figure out troubles during my studies.

I really enjoyed being a TA for analytical chemistry and chemistry for the life sciences III. I also had an amazing time performing research in the Harki lab.

What I appreciate most about the Chemistry Department at the U is the community of passionate faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students who strive for diversity and inclusion and have been consistently available to mentor me and help me plan my next steps and succeed. It is safe to say that all of the supportive people in the department are a major reason why I have the opportunity to attend one of the top chemistry graduate programs in the country this fall.

My highlights range from quality of instruction to opportunitites in outreach and research. I have been impressed by the departments to transform chemistry education. From my first moments in the department, faculty have been especially concerned with guaranteeing accessible and effective education. I also experienced lab-specific outreach events, or those headed or sponsored by the department including Energy and U or Queer Science. Additionally, the summer undergraduate research fellowship was an outstanding experience that most students are unable to receive. I was so greatful to receive income and funding for my own research on campus.

Dr. Penn was a great advisor

I have had no bad experiences in my chemistry classes; everyone is so great! I do know that there are a lot of opportunities for research, but the chemistry department was fine with me conducting research with a non-chemistry faculty member as long as it incorporates chemistry and I learn from it.

The highlights of my time at the university goes to the labs I was in. The people in the labs that I took made lab an extremely enjoyable learning environment. The TA's are always helpful, and are great resources to a successful learning environment. In research my lab group always made me feel like I fit in at the school even though it was still my first year. They helped me lose my jitters about doing research and helped me with confidence. The grad students are the university of Minnesota are fantastic and provided me with an experience I don't think I could have had anywhere else. Which will always make me thankful for going into this major.

All the professors are at the top of their fields and some are working on groundbreaking material.

Instructors have been extremely knowledgeable on all the topic taught, and the chemistry major does a great job of ensuring you take courses on a wide range of chemistry-related subjects.

Course material meant to make students be able to understand and get involved with research currently being conducted was an incredible aspect of the experience.

All of my Chemistry professors were absolutely amazing compared to other classes in different departments I’ve taken.

There are a vast amount of resources in the chemistry department at the UMN. It's just a matter of being ambitious enough to reach out to a professor or two that works in an area you are interested in.

My chemistry professors were knowledgeable and very approachable. My favorite chemistry classes were the Ochem classes (Dr. Salmon and Prof. Douglas), Ochem lab (I enjoyed learning basic reaction techniques and the experiments were cool), and advanced analytical chemistry lec+lab (Dr. Bantz and Prof. Arriaga). For anyone going straight into industry after graduating, I think the advanced Achem classes will prepare us well (in terms of exposing us to the various analytical instruments and data analysis techniques). Regarding research opportunities, it was a bit difficult at first for me (as a sophomore with only gen chem lab experience) to get in contact with professors. I really appreciate Prof. Pierre's willingness to allow me to join her group for about a year. It gave me exposure to some lab skills not taught in classes, prepared me a little bit for Ochem lab, and exposed me to how a research lab functions + its culture.

The advising department was very helpful and friendly.

I didn't do any research with the Chemistry department during my time here, but the amount of opportunities is impressive. The lab class that I enjoyed the most was Organic Chem Lab I since a lot of the content in the class was new and exciting.

The advising provided by the department specifically was phenomenal. The information and support provided helped make me feel more integrated with the University of Minnesota and excited for the future.

Prof. Hoye was particularly impactful in my journey to pursuing a PhD. His freshman OChem course sparked my interest in the subject, and he's acted as a mentor for me since then. The same can be said for Prof. Kass, who welcomed me into his research group and helped me in what would be my first undergraduate research experience. Finally, it's been great to work with Stephanie, who's always been extremely helpful whenever I had questions or needed academic advice.