Departmental decision-making student representatives regularly attend department faculty meetings. Students were instrumental in our recent curriculum revision and participate actively in the hiring of new faculty members.
Students and faculty regularly attend and make presentations at professional conferences such as meetings of the American Chemical Society and the National Conference on Undergraduate Research.
Each year the department awards four prizes for outstanding achievement: special awards for first-year students, organic, and analytical chemistry; the College Prize of the Society for Analytical Chemistry, the Richard I. Lee Prize to the most promising major, and the Outstanding Junior Major Prize.
The chemistry department has a stimulating seminar program that brings 8-10 outside speakers to campus each year. The annual Lord Lecture brings some of the nation's most distringuished chemists to the College for residencies of up to one week. Recent Lord Lecturers include Dudley Herschbach, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and George Whitesides, Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University and winner of the 1998 National Medal of Science.
The student-run Chemii Club (American Chemical Society student affiliate chapter) organizes field trips, speakers, presentations in the local schools, and social events for chemistry students. For the past two years, the club has received recognition as Commendable from the American Chemical Society.
Most chemistry students spend at least one summer as a research intern. Many Allegheny faculty have grant funds available to support summer work, and Allegheny students are also successful at obtaining internships at other institutions such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Emory University, and Bayer Corporation.
