Dr. Ethan Gallogly joined the SMC team in the Fall of 1999. Ethan was born in a hospital in the Bronx and shares a birthday of 9/11 with approximately one out of every 365 Americans.

“...Back then it was a good day – the start of the TV season...”

He grew up in Long Island and Connecticut and obtained a B.S. in Chemistry and Biology at the University of Connecticut in 1987. Ethan moved to the West coast for graduate school at UC Davis and has made California his home ever since.

“...you can check out anytime you like, but you can never never leave!” -The Eagles, Hotel California

At Davis Ethan completed a Ph.D. degree in Physical Chemistry under Professor William M. Jackson. His doctoral thesis was on Crossed Molecular Beam studies of Buckminsterfullerene (C60). A complex project involving the design of a novel $200,000 crossed beam machine with a rotating source and quadrupole mass spectrometer detector.

While doing his Ph.D. research Ethan became interested in Asian literature and pursued several years of Chinese studies concurrent with his doctoral work. During this time he lived with an overseas family from Qinghai China who are now his second "adopted" family.

Following his graduation from Davis in 1993 Ethan travelled to Mainland China for two years working as a Foreign Expert at the Wuxi Institute of Light Industry, then at Southwest Jiaotong University in Sichuan Province. There he taught English, Western Culture, Science, and Technology courses and became enamored of hot spicy Sichuan food!

“不麻不辣就没得味儿...” -Sichuan saying

Returning to America in 1995, Ethan worked as a part time Chemistry Instructor at UC Davis, Sacramento City College, Ohlone College, and Cal State Hayward.

After a year of excellent teaching reviews, he was hired full time as a 3-year Lecturer and Laboratory Coordinator at UC Berkeley. At Cal he developed a new laboratory program, authored two lab manuals, directed a small undergraduate research group studying estrogen mimics, hired and supervised a staff of some 50 Teaching Assistants for the General Chemistry program, and taught lecture sections of Chemistry 1A and 1B (the SMC equivalent of chemistry 11 & 12).

In his spare time he also managed to pursue his interest in Asian languages auditing courses in: Buddhism, Classical Chinese, and Modern Literature (all in Chinese). He was also a leader for the Sierra Club, the Cal Berkeley Hiking Club (CHAOS) and is an avid backpacker and occasional mountain climber...

"I am always glad to touch the living rock again, and dip my hand in high mountain air..." -John Muir

Following a successful career at Berkeley, Ethan was hired onto the SMC faculty as an Associate Professor in 1999 and has taught Chemistry 9, Chemistry 10, Chemistry 11, Chemistry 12, and Human Development 20 for Science Majors. In 2005 he became a full tenured professor at Santa Monica College. He has been a member of the SMC academic senate and has also learned some Korean.

Ethan has been dubbed "Dr. Demo" by some of his colleagues and has worked to establish a set of Chemical Education Lecture Demonstrations as a resource to the SMC teaching faculty.

He is also a department pioneer in the area of on-line assignments and has personally coded over 100 new on-line chemistry problems. All of his courses now use the Sapling Online Homework System.

In addition to his career, he has traveled extensively in Asia including: Mainland China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, and Korea. In the summer of 2003 he completed a tour of Europe including: France, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands.

"...one of the best parts of working at SMC is that the college encourages you to expand your horizons in many different directions. All the knowledge that one gains in life is seen as complementary to one's teaching skills. The bottom line is that SMC respects teaching, and that is why I'm here!"

He has been known to bike to work and completed the California AIDs ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles in June 2000 – helping to raise 11.25 million dollars for AIDs patients, research, outreach, and education.

He has worked as a co-faculty advisor to the campus chemistry club and worked with several highly-motivated SMC students to develop a working fuel cell, a clean alternative source of energy for the future!

Ethan spent five years collaborating on a new edition of a general chemistry textbook with Peter Rock and Don McQuarrie which has now been published!! You can check out the link at: http://mcquarriegeneralchemistry.com/

In 2010 he returned from an SMC-sponsored sabbatical in Chengdu China where studied Fuel Cell Technology, working on proton exchange membranes and platinum catalysts for fuel cells, and learning how to split water using sunlight to produce clean hydrogen. His work on catalysis was recently published in the scholarly journal Electrochemistry Communications (reference below).

In the summer of 2011 Ethan worked on an artificial intelligence project applying neural networks to the problem of computer vision at the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) under a grant from CIPAIR.

In December/January of 2011-2012 Ethan traveled to Peru and the Amazon Rainforest, spending 10 days in the Amazon and returning with over a thousand photos (and just as many bug bites!).

In the summer of 2012 Ethan spent three transformational weeks on Orcus Island in Washington at the Bullock's Permaculture Homestead studying sustainable design, organic agriculture, and is now a certified graduate of their program. These are skills that can be integrated into both teaching and life beyond college.

Ethan spent 2013 exploring France, 2014 backpacking in the Sierras, and 2015 back in China.

In 2016 Ethan sailed halfway across the Atlantic as crew on the traditional tall ship the Bark Europa travelling from the Azore Islands to the tall ship festival in Brest France.

After returning from France in the summer of 2016 Ethan spent 28 days in the woods hiking 220 miles on the John Muir Trail (JMT) from Yosemite to Mt. Whitney (the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States).

In 2017 Ethan hiked most of the Oregon Section of the PCT braving snow and ice, hordes of mosquitoes, wildfires, lost trails and downed trees in the year of "fire & ice".

In the Summer of 2018 Ethan returned to the Sierra to spend six weeks hiking the Theodore Solomons Trail (TST) an unofficial and partially unmaintained trail that parallels the John Muir Trail from Horseshoe Meadows to Glacier Point. He made it as far as Crown Valley, crossing the Middle Fork of the Kings River in remote Tehipite Valley, when he was smoked out by the Yosemite fires. Undaunted, he returned to his car via the High Sierra Trail (HST).

In 2019 Ethan revisited parts of the John Muir Trail for a novel he is working on about the trail, and in 2020 he returned to the Sierra to “socially isolate” and finish the Solomons Trail, hiking the last 100 miles from Yosemite to Crown Valley, making him one of less than ten people to complete the Solomons Trail in the past eight years.

In 2020 Ethan completed hiking the part of the Theodore Solomons Trail (TST) from Yosemite to Crown Valley that he began in 2018. Much of this trail was "route finding" over blown down trees and the way was very challenging. Sadly, in August part of this route was burned in the devastating Creek Fire. It is unknown how much remains. Following this hike, Ethan spent most of 2020 socially isolating because of the Coronavirus. Although he did manage a winter backpacking trip up to the old Panamint City silver mine and ghost town near Death Valley in December.

In 2021 Ethan returned to the JMT/PCT, hiking with his son from Kennedy Meadows to Onion Valley and then continuing solo to Yosemite (275 miles total) with a few interesting side trips to historically important regions of the Sierra. He was planning to hike all the way to Tahoe, but the Tahoe fires that year caused him to change plans.

Ethan will be teaching remotely in 2022, but if you visit him online, he would be happy to discuss chemical education, fuel cells, sustainable design, share travel stories, swap Tang poems, discuss the best hotsprings to backpack to in California, or just have a game of "Go" (badook or weiqi) over some nice Taiwanese oolong tea...

Ethan will be retiring from teaching in 2023. In 2023 he plans to hike the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and then continue working as an author.

Cheers!!

Recent Publications:

General Chemistry, Donald A. McQuarrie, Peter A. Rock, Ethan B. Gallogly, University Science Books, Mill Valley, California, 4th Edition, 2011.

Studies on how to obtain the best catalytic activity of Pt/C catalysts by three reduction routes for methanol electro- oxidation, Jinwei Chen, Chunping Jiang, Xin Yang, Lan Feng, Ethan B. Gallogly, and Ruilin Wang, Electrochemistry Communications, 13 (2011) 314-316.

Lectures:

Fuel Cell Technology for the 21st Century.

SMC Distinguished Scientist Lecture, November 2011.

Photography Demystified, better understanding through chemistry.

SMC Distinguished Scientist Lecture, March 2000 (See also link to my photo page!)

Conferences Attended:

ACS Annual Conference, 2011, Anaheim, CA.

Biannual Conference on Chemical Education, 2000, Ann Arbor, MI. (with the kind support of Santa Monica College and the SMC dept. of Physical Sciences -- thank you!).