A professor helps a student with lab work.
Department of Chemistry
Biochemistry
Department of Education
For more than 40 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 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 a new 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, or enter the field of environmental science. You might instead decide to study law, specialize in forensics, teach in secondary school, or work in the chemical industry. With the excellent grounding in both theory and research that our program provides, the choice is yours.