For more than 50 years our students have been doing hands-on science because we know that's what chemists want to do most: formulate their own answers in the laboratory. In your freshman year you'll begin working closely with your professors in the lab. You might even present your findings at a national conference or publish a paper in a professional journal.
The curriculum systematically takes you through the principles of chemistry and prepares you for research -- and we give you plenty of time for that: many students graduate with more than 500 hours in the laboratory. You may develop new materials to use as synthetic bone, fuel cells, or to convert solar energy to electricity. Whatever the topic, your lab experience will closely resemble the real world of science.
Our facilities are state-of-the-art; recent acquisitions include an x-ray diffractometer, a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, a 400 Mhz NMR instrument, an atomic absorption spectrophotometer, and a biomolecular mass analyzer.
Our chemistry majors pursue graduate study at top universities such as UC Berkeley, Caltech, Purdue, Harvard, and Penn State. Others go on to medical, dental, or other health-professional schools. You might instead decide to study law, specialize in forensics, enter the field of environmental science, teach at a high school, or work at a company such as DuPont or GE. With the excellent grounding in both theory and research that our program provides, the choice is yours.