Chemistry Department

Faculty Archives:

Dr. Paul Weber, chair of the chemistry department at Briar Cliff University, participated in the "Green Chemical Education" workshop July 21-25, 2001, at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Ore. "Green chemistry" refers to chemistry practiced with environmental concerns.

The four-day workshop consisted of two parts. The first two days were organized in a symposium format with a panel of speakers from around the world. Sessions included introductions to green chemistry, adoption of green organic experiments and lecture materials, challenges and opportunities in green chemistry education, and advice on developing new green chemistry materials.

The second two days involved time in class and in the lab working with both well-tested green lab experiments and labs that are currently in development.

Student Archives:

Justin Pennington, a May 2002 graduate from BCU in Chemistry and a current third year student in Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Kansas, presented the results of research that he and Dr. Weber conducted in the spring of 2002 while Justin was a senior at BCU. The presentation "Development of Electrochemical Tags for DNA Sequencing" was made at the Midwest Regional American Chemical Society meeting on Oct. 23, 2002 in Lawrence, Kansas. Dr. Weber, chairman of the Chemistry Department, had received a grant (Maytag Innovation Award) to work on the project.