Welcome to the Ithaca College Chemistry Department Virtual Tour, a great place to begin if you're interested in learning more about Ithaca College's chemistry and biochemistry programs.

This virtual tour was designed, written, and edited in its entirety by the students of our chemistry department for prospective students and family members like you, who are looking for a better view of what daily life is like on the third floor of the Center for Natural Sciences building.

Whether you have already seen our department, are planning a visit, or just can't seem to make it to Ithaca, this virtual tour was created to allow you to see our facilities from the inside.

Simply click "Next Picture" to advance the virtual tour. To jump to a specific part of the tour, visit the Tour Index.

This virtual tour (photographs, text, and arrangement) was developed by Daniel Cordaro ('07).

We begin our tour on the third floor balcony of CNS. Brightly lit by a three story wall of glass, the chemistry department has access to one of the best indoor views on campus.

Overlooking the bustling campus quads and the greater city of Ithaca, the third floor balcony offers a comfortable meeting place where students, faculty, and staff members are often found waiting in between classes, eating lunch together, or just chatting. Here we see some students talking with Professor
Mike Haaf just after lunch.

See those posters lining the wall? They're student/faculty research topics as well individual student poster projects. As a chemistry or biochemistry major, every student is given the opportunity to design a research poster that describes their project for everyone to read about, and finished projects may even be eligible to present at an American Chemical Society meeting.

If you were to look behind that glass panel on the right, you'd see a few children's drawings and many photos of kids doing chemistry experiments. That's because our chemistry department has a very nice connection with both the Ithaca Science Center for Children and the local elementary schools. Several times a year, our students organize and perform chemistry demonstrations for the children in Ithaca. Community outreach is a very important part of life on the Ithaca College campus, and the chemistry department is no exception.

On the other side of that wall are the two largest laboratories in the building, both of which are used only for chemistry classes. You'll get to see those in just a moment. Down the hall and to the right you would find faculty offices, labs, and a classroom where all of the upper level chemistry courses are held. There are 25 seats in that classroom, yet not even half of them will be full during class. Chemistry students can take full advantage of the very low student to faculty ratio that you've probably heard about during your exploration of Ithaca College.

This is one of the two large laboratories where Experimental Chemistry I through V are held. Each lab is equipped with room enough for 24 students to experiment comfortably, and each pair of students get the full length of one of those black lab desks all to themselves.

Underneath the desks you will find individually marked drawers containing the essentials for labwork. Students take the responsibility to store and maintain their own glassware and electrical equipment, but anything that is malfunctioning or has become outdated is replaced immediately. In other words, you'll never find yourself short one hotplate right in the middle of an experiment!

Exiting the tidy, yet deserted first lab on a Thursday afternoon, we find the second bustling with students. While some work on their compounds at the fume hood, others peer into the eyepiece of the black melting point indicators lining the lab desks, waiting for that moment when their crystalline sample drips down the side of the capillary tube and forms a liquid.

This is the Experimental I (EI) laboratory, where the equations and problem sets given in class become tangible concepts that students can observe. The introductory courses' lesson plans always tie directly into what is being done in lab, and so when you learn how to calculate freezing point depression in Principles of Chemistry, you can be sure that you'll see the concept happen in your experimental class.

Students begin EII by learning the basics of powerful molecular modeling programs like Gaussian and Spartan and then quickly move on to organic synthesis. Not only do the graduates of these two labs have the skill to take on all kinds of chemistry experiments, but after producing several mock publications of experiments and having extensive criticism of laboratory notebooks, all students leave as proficient writers and retain the ability to communicate their ideas with others.

EII and EIII are also geared towards developing important lab techniques as well as plunging into the operation and analysis of NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. Students can learn how to operate the heavy chemistry machinery as early as their freshman year, an extremely rare opportunity in the undergraduate world.

As early as Freshman year, students become very familiar with instrumental analysis for a wide variety of chemical systems. The instrument room houses some of the most powerful spectroscopy, analysis, and data-gathering tools in the chemical industry. Some
of our most commonly used instruments include:

Agilent 5972 GC/Mass Spectrometer
Shimadzu HPLC Systems (2x)
Shimadzu UV-Vis UV2101
Shimadzu Atomic Absorption AA-6300 (with Graphite Furnace)
Hitachi 4500 Fluorescence Spectrophotometer
Agilent 8453 Diode Array UV-Vis Spectrophotometer
MacNeil Model 1 Gouy Magnetic susceptibility Apparatus
(designed and created by our instrument coordinator, Jim MacNeil)

Students may have access to the instrument room both during experimental laboratory classes as well as when working on research projects with other faculty members. Chemistry and biochemistry majors have the unique hands-on opportunity not otherwise found in larger schools, where the instrument time is given to graduate students. Also, for those of you who are really interested in becoming masters of the heavy equipment, an instrumental analysis class is offered on a yearly basis.

As mentioned earlier, chemistry and biochemistry majors have the opportunity to begin research projects with faculty members as early as their freshman year, and each faculty member serves as a resident expert in a specific branch of chemistry.

You are are now looking at one of Professor Vincent DeTuri's physical/analytical chemistry labs. The DeTuri group is currently working on developing accurate models for various solvent and reaction systems, and they make use of one of the department's newest instruments: the triple quadrupole mass spectrometer.

Students working in the DeTuri group have the opportunity to learn a great deal about mass spectrometry and use the triple quadrupole mass spec to acquire experimental data to correlate with their theoretical calculations.

Walking a few doors further, you'll begin to smell the satisfying aroma of freshly brewed dark roast coffee. The DeTuri Computer Chemistry Laboratory is chemical free and always bustling with students writing papers, researching online, and running powerful molecular modeling programs on a variety of chemical systems. With over ten multiple-processor, state-of-the-art computers, the computational chemistry program gives students the chance to observe chemical systems at the molecular level like no other chemistry lab can.

Students interested in physical and computational chemistry may contact Professor DeTuri with questions or concerns anytime.

The Haaf group is focused primarily on synthesizing organic compounds to be used in other studies both inside and out of Ithaca College. Working together with some of the top medical researchers in the country such as Hershey Medical Center, Professor Mike Haaf's students produce the next wave of potential drug candidates, enzyme inhibitors, catalysts, and other compounds related to medical and biochemical studies.

Students working in the Haaf group quickly become experts in NMR analysis, a popular tool to identify organic compounds. Also, most researchers learn how to use the expanded schlenk line, an amazing network of glassware under vacuum or argon gas for the most sensitive reactions.

Ryan and Dustin, two senior research students, are performing a lyophilization in the expanded schlenk line setup to the left. Professor Haaf is helping them prepare for an upcoming ACS meeting where they will be presenting their research in front of a national audience of chemists.

Any student who has performed significant research at Ithaca College is always invited to present their work at national conferences held biannually all across the United States. Many students in the past have presented their research at a national conference in the form of a poster, an honor that is reserved in most schools for graduate workers.

The newest addition to our instrument family is the JEOL 400 MHz Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometer, which replaced our older 300 MHz instrument. This extremely powerful tool for both confirming and identifying chemical structures has never made spectra so easy to acquire and interpret.

The 400 MHz instrument comes equipped with a 24 slot auto-sampler and auto-save capabilities. That means that if you and 23 of your buddies need to run a sample, not only will the machine run each of them for you, hands free, but it will also save each spectrum in a separate file to print out later. Also, in case you can't make it to the NMR room, any student can simply log onto our database with their username and password and retrieve their finished data online from any remote location.

All chemistry students are required to become familiar with our new NMR spectrometer in their lab courses, and any student who does research quickly becomes a resident expert of NMR spectroscopy.

Professor Anna Larsen does her research primarily on inorganic and organometallic compounds such as ionic liquids and various metal complexes. One of her group's primary goals is to develop a variety of environmentally friendly inorganic liquids to serve as alternatives to other rather toxic organic solvents commonly used today.

Using the carborane cage complex, the extremely stable icosohedral molecule known for its ability to form superacids in solution, the Larsen group investigates the properties of many organometallic liquid salt derivatives. Students working in Anna's group quickly become well versed in how metals interact with other atoms and molecules as well as solving crystal structures of any newly synthesized substance.

Many reactions are highly sensitive to atmospheric conditions, and so they must be run in very carefully controlled environments. Here you see a student in Anna Larsen's group performing a very delicate metallation reaction in a glove box, which contains an environment that is completely sealed off from our own; it is pressurized with nitrogen gas, and one may only place things in the box by passing it through a series of vacuum chambers.

Since some students are studying the newest and most delicate chemical reactions, they may need to learn how to run carefully controlled syntheses in order to achieve the highest yields and best results possible. The advanced schlenk line that you saw before is another example of such an environment. To learn more about our Inorganic Chemistry opportunities as well as general questions, do not hesitate to contact Professor Anna Larsen.

Another very strong branch in our department is biochemistry, headed by Professor Scott Ulrich. His research students work primarily with synthesizing and testing molecules that inhibit biological enzymes. Enzyme inhibition has the potential to alleviate certain cancers, heart disease, nerve disorders, and other common ailments. Scott's group also works to determine the function of newly discovered enzymes.

Students working with Scott learn how to engineer proteins and other biological molecules as well as develop ways to test, inhibit, and analyze the functions of enzymes. This research project even has the potential to discover new enzymes, a vastly important area in science today. Students interested in biochemical research or the biochemistry program at Ithaca College are encouraged to email Professor Scott Ulrich.

One of the most unique aspects of the Ithaca College Chemistry Department is the fact that the professors spend much of their time out of the classroom personally meeting with students to discuss chemistry, classes, and anything else that may come up during your four years here. If students have a question, there is always a professor there to help.

Although each class provides teacher's assistants for additional help, your professor will be your primary contact at all times. Because of this, students find themselves forming very strong bonds with the faculty, a feature that we feel is extremely important for our chemistry and biochemistry undergraduates. Students can expect a high quality education through personal, advanced learning experiences with the faculty.

Professor Keri Lee's research group synthesizes complex organic polymers to be used for medical applications. The group is currently looking into new star polymers for use in bone tissue engineering. Polymer research students become resident experts on modern material chemistry, and often deal with synthesizing and testing their products for flexibility, strength, and degradation characteristics. Keri's group hopes to discover a material that could replace metal implants, which are subject to fatigue and wear.

Polymer chemistry has become an extremely important branch of chemistry in recent years, and any student interested in this field should contact Professor Keri Lee with any questions about her research or her new polymer class.

Senior chemistry and biochemistry majors all have the opportunity to perform two semesters of honors research in order to graduate with honors in chemistry. Chemistry honors students must take at least three credits of research during each of the two semesters of their senior year. During the final semster, an honors researcher must write a thesis of their progress and defend it in front of a board of faculty members.

This program was specifically designed to mimic what it is like to perform your own research outside of college. In graduate school, students are usually required to write a thesis describing their many years of work, which is then typically reviewed by a board. The chemistry honors research program allows students to be very well prepared to express science in both spoken and written forms.

After students have completed their introductory courses in chemistry, the typical class size usually hovers within the range of 5 to 12 students, providing an excellent academic environment for both the professor and the student. You are now peeking into the door of CNS 333, where many of the advanced classes are held.

Equipped with a wraparound chalkboard, overhead computer screen projector, experiment desk, surround sound multimedia system, and a chemistry laboratory just five feet from the door, this classroom provides the ultimate environment for a chemistry lecture.

This is also where chemistry seminar is held, which is a required chemistry class that invites top chemists from all over the U.S. to come and speak to our students about their research experiences. In the spring semester of 2006 alone, our seminar series included two Nobel Prize Laureates in Chemistry.

Students who take chemistry seminar are also required to give seminars themselves on a topic of their choice. After each student gives their lecture, the other students and professors evaluate the performance and offer feedback. Each student graduates from chemistry seminar with an enhanced ability for public speaking in science.

We hope that you enjoyed our virtual tour and that you now have a feeling of what the Ithaca College Chemistry Department is like. Please have fun browsing the rest of our website and don't hesitate to contact any of our faculty and staff with questions that you may have.

We would also be more than happy to meet with you for a real tour if you can make it to Ithaca. Simply make your way to the admission website and schedule a visit today! Let us know when you can make it, and we'll be sure to set up a science building tour so you can see our facilities from the inside out...

...And maybe you too can get to see the best view in Ithaca!

1. The Tour Starts Here...
2. The Balcony
3. The Balcony
4. Classroom Labs
5. Classroom Labs
6. Classroom Labs
7. Instrument Room
8. Physical Chemistry
9. Physical Chemistry
10.Organic Synthesis
11.Organic Synthesis
12.Brand New NMR
13.Inorganic Chemistry
14.Specialized Synthesis
15.Biochemistry
16.Students and Faculty
17.Polymer Chemistry
18.Honors Research
19.Chemistry Classes
20.See You Soon!
21.The View