UConn Chem

Chemistry at UConn is rather interesting. There's a gorgeous new building that was completed before my freshman year and the labs there are squeaky clean for the most part. I'm not sure how many chemistry majors there are, but it's on the order of 100. Many are pre-Med or pre-Pharm and others, like myself, are looking at graduate school. There's the UConn Chem Club which does pretty well for itself. It's a tier 2 student organization and the ACS has been pretty impressed by its efforts. They also hosted part of the North Eastern Regionals Meeting this year. I was an officer sophomore year but wasn't reelected (I was going to be an RA anyway this year). However, there is less than stellar excitement among its members aside from the officers themselves. I've always thought that there's too much planning and not enough doing, lecturers should be brought in, and more should be done to improve the members themselves than just volunteer work. I'd like to see a glass-working seminar which might come in useful if I ever need to fit glassware for a set-up or just not break something accidentally then I need to get it unstuck.

If you want to do chemistry, there's also the Institute of Material Science (Friday is seminar day, if you like polymers) where I do research and I guess you can find your way into the Pharmacy Building too. All three buildings have all the fixings more or less for chemistry work. One thing I do not like about chemistry, and maybe this goes for other less populated majors (you crazy Turf Science folk), is that it doesn't get a lot of attention when it comes to events that the university or departments like Honors puts on. Biology, business, and psychology folk get a lot of special attention. Not that I'm bitter.

The whole path from domestic research at my home university to traveling to Thailand for a summer begins with my own research at UConn, which I like to talk about.