The Department of Chemistry
The Chemistry Department at the University of Utah made a transition from a small department without a graduate program to a modern comprehensive department as the University of Utah assumed the role of a Research I university during the tenure of Henry Eyring as Dean of the Graduate School. In 1946, a chemistry major was the first PhD candidate to graduate from the university. Since then, the Chemistry Department has grown in stature. The most recent review by the Graduate Council quoted an outside reviewer, a member of the National Academy of Sciences who described the department as having “one of the nation’s strongest and most respected programs”. The chemistry program at Utah consistently ranks in the upper 10-15% of all graduate programs (182 programs) and in the top 10 of state-funded universities based on federal research & development funding.
The Chemistry Department is nationally and internationally recognized for its quality and has been a consistent contributor to the educational and research missions of the University of Utah. Its faculty consists of 32 tenure track faculty members including 8 Distinguished Professors. Most indicators of excellence place the Chemistry Department among the top 30 in the United States. In 2007-8 academic year ca. 300 undergraduate majors studied at the Department (10th in country out of about 650 programs) and 65 students were certified by the Am. Chem. Soc. (4th in the country).
The faculty at the Chemistry Department are well-recognized locally, nationally, and internationally. Over the past six years they received 21 major awards from professional societies, 12 major awards from private foundations, 8 fellowships of learned societies, numerous local and University awards and 7 University-wide teaching awards. The faculty serves on a variety of national and international advisory committees, editorial advisory boards, as well as reviewers of scholarly publications. The department houses the main editorial offices of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (P. J. Stang, Editor, Member of the National Academy of Sciences and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences), the Journal of Organic Chemistry (C. D. Poulter, Editor, Fellow of AAAS), Applied Spectroscopy (J. M. Harris, Editor).
