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Message from the Chair
While I haven't fully taken over the reins yet, I guess I'm officially the new Chair of the Department, so the duty (and honour) of addressing you here falls on my shoulders.
I'm sure you were all shocked enough last year
when you received the first issue of McMaster Chemical Extracts, and I'm just as sure that most of you, particularly those who know some of us fairly well, were convinced that it would also very likely be the last. It is thus with considerable delight that I introduce to you the second issue of McMaster Chemical Extracts. We owe a big round of thanks to Editor-in-Chief Randy Dumont and his legion of helpers for starting things up last year and seeing to it that the effort will continue. I think we can now officially consider this a tradition.
We received a large number of comments after last year's publication, many of which reinforced our original suspicion that an annual newsletter from the old goats at Mac would be well-received, not to mention well-deserved. We've made this activity even easier for you this year, by making the newsletter accessible on our web site, along with an easy-to-use comment form which will enable you to send us your thoughts and stories with a mere click of the mouse. Please keep us informed of your activities, so that we can pass them along to your colleagues in a future issue of this newsletter. While I'm on the topic of web sites, I'll tell you that ours is in the process of being completely redesigned. The new McMaster Chemistry web site will be unveiled any time now, and the new look will blow you away.
Much has happened here over the past year, as you're about to find out. At the top of the list are our three new faculty members - Paul Berti, a "biophysical-organic" chemist who employs kinetic isotope effects to study the mechanisms of enzyme-catalyzed reactions; YingFu (Jeff) Li, a biochemist with an impressive background in synthetic organic chemistry, who is studying DNA catalysis; and John Valliant, a radiopharmaceutical guy who some of you already know, and who promises to revitalize our long-standing tradition in radiochemistry and nuclear chemistry. All three are joint appointments with other departments, John with the Department of Physics & Astronomy and Paul and Jeff with the Department of Biochemistry, but their primary teaching duties are here with us. More new faculty are on the horizon, as we're just starting to interview candidates for positions in synthetic inorganic and polymer chemistry. We have a number of really promising applicants to sift through in both areas over the next few months. After the drastic cuts we suffered a few years ago, the department is starting to grow again. This is in no small part due to the efforts of Mike McGlinchey, our most recent - and still "acting" - Chair.
Four of our faculty received prestigious awards in the past year. Harald Stöver was awarded the NSERC/3M Canada Industrial Research Chair in Polymers for Advanced Materials, while Brian McCarry was awarded the Stephen A. Jarislowsky Chair in Environmental Science. Gary Schrobilgen was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and John Brennan has been awarded one of the new Premier's Research Excellence Awards.
The geologists are finally making serious threats to move into their new quarters in the General Sciences Building, to make room for our new undergrad labs in the old Geology wing. We'll be into serious discussions on their design early in the new year - er, millennium. I can't tell you how exciting it is that this is happening - our plans call for enough fumehoods to enable 120 students to work at the same time, which will mean that no undergraduate, from 1st year on up, will ever again handle hazardous chemicals outside of a fumehood. That is the way all of you out there are doing it, right? We also hope to more or less completely replace our undergraduate instruments by the time it comes for us to move in. Of course, this excludes the eight brand-new gas chromatographs the Dean and Provost bought us last year.
We've also fared extremely well in the area of departmental research instrumentation, due largely to the efforts of Harald Stöver and John Valliant in establishing the department's role in two Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) grants that were funded in the past year. You can read about these on pages 7 and 18; suffice it to say that the department will benefit very significantly from these grants, with several new pieces of major equipment, a new joint faculty position, and a new research wing to house the department's polymer group. Our next CFI submission will be entitled "Molecular Interactions", and will involve most department members as well as our Associate members in Biochemistry. We're hoping to take this opportunity to secure funding for a new 700-MHz NMR spectrometer. On a smaller scale, several new UV/VIS spectrometers were acquired last year from NSERC, to replace our old HP and PE instruments. One of them is the first occupant of a new departmental "Advanced Optical Spectroscopy" Lab, which has been established in the basement of ABB.
During the past year, we've begun the process of seriously reworking our undergraduate programs and curricula, and this will intensify over the next year or so as the new undergrad labs get closer to being a reality. We're planning some major changes, intended to help broaden our service base, increase undergraduate enrolment in chemistry programs and make them more relevant to our "customers" (i.e., our students and their future employers). These changes will also ready us to deal with the so-called "double cohort" of students that will enter the system in 2003, as a result of the new curriculum that is being introduced in Ontario secondary schools this year.
McMaster University has recently announced a major new fundraising drive - so you can all expect a phone call from someone in the Advancement Office asking for a donation. I'm not going to be so crass as to "urge you to donate generously", but I will say this: if you are inclined to contribute financially to McMaster, please make it clear that you want your contribution to specifically support the Chemistry Department, and indicate what exactly you'd like to support. Some portion of the proceeds from the university's fundraising efforts will be used for the new undergrad labs and new research wing that I spoke of earlier, and one of my main activities over the next year will be directed at ensuring that this portion is as large as possible. By earmarking your support for chemistry, you'll help make it easier for me to do this, and I promise you that you'll receive permanent public recognition for it. We're going to need a lot of money in order to accomplish everything we're dreaming of, and I hope you can help us raise it. I guess that sounds fairly crass after all. Sorry, I'll move on.
Let me just close by saying how excited I am to be given the opportunity to lead the department through the next few exciting years in McMaster history. Enjoy the newsletter and please, give us a call and let us know what you think!
Willie ("Incoming") Leigh
Professor and Chair
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