The Cabrini Chemistry Department has acquired new lab instruments for analyzing environmental samples, thanks to a recent $44,955 grant from the McLean Contributionship. The grant provides students in Chemistry lab classes with access to updated spectrophotometers and a High-Performance Liquid Chromatographer (HPLC), instrumentation that is vital to techniques chemists use in the subfields of biochemistry, organic, analytical, and environmental chemistry.
“By getting hands-on with this equipment, the students will get a much better understanding of how the concepts in their books work,” said Alex Davis, PhD, Assistant Professor, Chemistry. “Until you use some of these devices, you don’t really know how they work.”
Davis, whose own career in chemistry was inspired by a desire to “sort out some of the larger environmental problems using chemistry,” said students who understand these instruments (and their related techniques, spectroscopy and chromatography) will have an advantage when looking for jobs and internships.
Upperclassmen in some advanced lab courses will gain hands-on chromatography experience with the HPLC, a powerful, state-of-the-art tool that is particularly impactful in environmental chemistry.
“Many students will list knowing how to use one of these on their resumes,” Davis said. “Typically there are about four major techniques that employers are looking for, and this is one of them.”
Though Davis is the grant recipient, he credits the entire Chemistry Department—particularly Melinda Harrison, PhD, Chair and Professor, Chemistry, and Joseph M. Smith, PhD, Associate Professor, Chemistry—as well as Laura Chisholm, Executive Director, Grants and Foundation Relations, and team for their contributions to the grant award.
With the exception of the spring 2020 semester, the Chemistry Department has worked diligently to keep its labs safely in use throughout the pandemic, understanding the necessity of these experiences for students.
“Ultimately, we aim to produce graduates who are academically prepared, intellectually curious, and technically equipped to impact their field positively,” said Davis.
The McLean Contributionship, a Philadelphia-area organization established in 1951 for charitable, educational and scientific purposes, currently focuses its grant-making activities in the arts, culture and humanities, education, environment and animal welfare, and health and human services.