Volume 5
January 2004
M. Draganjac, Newsletter Editor
Faculty
and Staff
Thank
you
Alumni
News
Department
News
Other
News
Scholarly
Activity
Grants
Publications
Presentations
Student
News
Society
of Physics Students
Student
Affiliates, American Chemical Society
Past issues:
| Volume 1, January 2000 Issue | Volume 2, January 2001 Issue | Volume 3, January 2002 Issue |
| Volume 4, January 2003 Issue | ||
Editor's Comments: Another year has passed and the ASU campus continues to grow. The Arkansas Biosciences Institute building is closer to completion and Caraway Road is no more, at least in front of the Lab Sciences Building. Construction of the new walking mall continues and should be finished soon (we hope). The Department continues to change and we are currently doing three searches for new tenure track faculty. Drs. Jimerson, Nave and Trautwein have now officially retired. Good people are always difficult to replace, and we will miss them, but with loss comes new. We are excited about the energy that new faculty bring to the campus and the classroom. We hope the alumni will continue to support the Department and help welcome the new faculty as they come on board. We would also like to hear from the alumni, not only to let us know what you are doing, but to let us know what we are doing well, and areas where we can improve.
Last, I would like to thank Ms. Lisa Templeton
for her efforts in getting this Newsletter to all of you.
Susan Allen - Chemical Physics
Edsel Ammons - Physics
Blaine Buckman - Chemistry Instructor
William Burns - Physical Chemistry
Sam Cron - Environmental Science
Ramin Daghigh - Nuclear Astrophysicist
Mark Draganjac - Inorganic Chemistry
Anne Grippo - Biochemistry
Juliet Hahn - Organic Chemistry
Robyn Hannigan - Environmental Chemistry and Geochemistry
Dawn Hefner - Instructor
Fred Hilgaman - Visiting Professor
Bruce Johnson - Biophysics, Condensed Matter Physics
Tillman Kennon - Science Education
Sergey Kudryasov - Chemical Physics
Maung Kyaw - Organic Chemistry
Bao-An Li - Nuclear Physics
Rich Maiorino - General Chemistry
Julie Morrow - Geology
Jennifer Norris - Physical Science
Mike Panigot - Organic Chemistry
Scott Reeve - Chemical Physics
Jon Russ - Analytical/ Geochemistry
Andy Sustich - Nuclear Physics
William Wyatt - Physical Chemistry
Bin Zhang - Nuclear Physics
Betty Pulford - Secretary
Lisa Templeton - Secretary
Ben Rougeau - Research Assistant/ Stockroom Manager
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The
faculty of the Department of Chemistry and Physics would like to thank
all of you that have contributed to the Department. With your continued
support, we hope to continue to grow and improve the Department both academically
and in our research capacity.
top
Alumni News:
We would like to hear from you. Tell us what you are doing now and
we'll include it in the newsletter. Also, please include your degree and
the year that you graduated. Write, call or e-mail us.
Department of Chemistry and Physics
P.O. Box 419
State University, AR 72467
Attn: Newsletter
Office: (870) 972 -3086
Fax: (870) 972 -3089
Former Student Named Outstanding Alumni John Woodside (class of 1936) is one of three named by the Arkansas State University Alumni Association as 2003 Outstanding Alumni. John is a 60-year member of the American Chemical Society and currently teaches math at Angelina Community College. During his career, John has served as both superintendent and/or plant manager of chemical plants in the U.S., Kuwait, Saudi Arabi and Spain. Congratulations to John for receiving this honor.
Alumni eGroup - where has the Alumni eGroup gone? There hasn't been much activity lately, maybe we are all busier. Please let us hear from you. Allen Goad is still running the group. The web address is: http://www.egroups.com/group/ASU_Chemistry_Alumni
Others that sent letters or e-mails are:
Carmon Dillard: Carmon writes "I'm a 1971 graduate of Arkansas State University and was pleased to receive your recent newsletter. It was good to learn that a few of the same professors I had, (from 67-71), are still there. I had Dr. Trautwein for Analytical Chemistry and Dr. Wyatt for Physical Chemistry. In the summer of 1968 I helped move the chemistry labs from the "old" building to what was then the "new" Science Building. It was quite the improvement from what we had in the old building and we were all very pleased to get to be the first to utilize the new labs and classrooms."
Carmon is currently the Vice President of Operations for Ionics Instruments Business Group in Boulder, Colorado. They manufacture and sell analytical instruments for the pharmaceutical, semi-conductor, power, food/beverage and petrochemical industries.
Randy Mulhollen - Randy writes "A little about myself. I graduated 1980 with a BS in Physical Science. Dr. Nave was my advisor, he's a good man and knowledgeable instructor. I started working as an R&D wet chemist for Humko in Memphis, which was owned by Kraft Foods at the time. Humko was a very large producer of fats and oils as well as other products. Fats and oils are very much a commodity business, thus high volumes of output and low profits (7% return in a good year). After 5 years in the lab I became a Food Technologist I & II for them and continued there for another 7 years. Philip Morris came into the picture along the way and felt the 7% profits we generated could be bettered in other business investments and gave our division 5 years to increase their profitability to 15%. It didn't happen, thus I was presented the unrefusable opportunity to leave and help the company decrease its labor expense, which in turn made the company appear more profitable (temporarily). The end result was the company was sold three different ways and I got out with a good severance deal.
My next big adventure came 4 months later when I became employed by Brown & Williamson Tobacco as a Product Developer in R&D. B&W is/was one of the big four tobacco companies and I developed cigarettes for them. During the last 3 years of my tenure I was training as a Flavorist. As you might know, tobacco companies use a lot of different flavoring compounds on tobacco to give different nuances and sensory perceptions. Organic compounds are dominant contributors to flavor and aroma sensations. It is a highly specialized job that you wont find "schools" for. Likewise there aren't a vast number of tobacco flavorists in the world. There were three of us at B&W, two trained and accepted flavorists and myself (considered a rookie since it takes 10 years training to be accepted as an accomplished tobacco flavorist), plus we had a technician. B&W is owned by British American Tobacco (BAT), an extremely large international tobacco company (#2 in the world). B&W had been losing market share for several years and in 2000 they were staffed with more personnel than what was needed for their production/market volumes. BAT demanded a manpower adjustment of $250,000,000. Again I was presented the unrefusable opportunity to leave and help "save the company". If the news is big enough to you, you may recall the recent press concerning B&W. They are no longer, BAT merged all their brands with RJR tobacco and the 2000+ people that make up B&W haven't opportunities with RJR. The salaried personnel will get a severance package, but it isn't as good as mine was three years ago. I got out on the good ship lollipop (again).
I now work for Swedish Match North America (SMNA). This company used to be called Pinkerton Tobacco before the Swede's purchased them. SMNA makes chewing tobacco, wet snuff, pipe tobacco, and cigars. RedMan chew, TimberWolf snuff, White Owl cigars and Garcia y Vega cigars are some of our more recognized brands. The cigar business is new to them and when it was purchased no technical or development personnel came with the package. SMNA was looking for someone with experience in product development for smoking articles, since their technical strength was solely on the chewing and dipping side of the business. Lucky me, that was my resume plus the caveat of flavorist experience, and there weren't too many of us floating around (at all). I have been with SMNA for 3 years now as a Product Development Chemists (their "cigar dude"). Two years ago our cigar business was suffering market share due to the new market introduction of "Blunt Wraps". Blunt Wraps are sections of the same material used to wrap cigars, and sold as rolling papers. We made "WO Blunt cigars" and a portion of our cigar business was going to individuals that would purchase them, strip out the tobacco and use the cigar wrapper for "recreational use". This "recreational use" became know as "blunting" on the streets, and a company out of Louisiana contracted with our wrapper supplier and started selling sections of cigar wrapper and calling them "Blunt Wraps". They would also heavily flavor the wrappers with flavors like apple, cherry, grape, etc. The end users liked this flavored wrap concept, thus they didn't need to purchase our unflavored cigars anymore. Lucky for us, the blunt wraps were sold for 50 cents, or more, each and you can buy White Owl Blunt cigars for about 30 cents each. The only thing SMNA had to do was start flavoring their Blunt cigars, which is where I came in. I have developed several flavored cigars for SMNA. In fact I have developed all of SMNA's flavored cigars. Our business is now better than it was before blunt wraps. The White Owl Peach Sport has set record sales for our company and I am now "Mr. cigar dude", but only until the demand for another home run product is expected. When that push comes along I will then become "hey boy, what have you done for me lately".
Welcome: Drs. Juliet Hahn, Ramin Daghigh, Muang Kyaw, Fred Hilgaman and Sergey Kudryasov have joined us this year in various capacities. We are also very fortunate to have Blaine Buckman, Dawn Hefner, Dr. Julie Morrow and Jennifer Norris help us fulfill our teaching mission.
Dr. Ramin Daghigh will be a temporary assistant professor in Chemistry and Physics Department for one year. He received his PhD from the University of Minnesota under Dr. Joseph Kapusta. In his PhD thesis, Ramin worked on the particle spectra emitted from microscopic black holes. At present he is working on the combined field equations of gravity and a scalar field with a false vacuum potential and categorizes himself as a nuclear astrophysicist. Before coming to ASU, he worked as a visiting researcher at the Queen's University of Belfast, UK in the applied mathematics and theoretical physics department for 8 months.
Dr. Juliet Miran Hahn is our new tenure track assistant professor
who comes to us most recently from a postdoctoral research position at
the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She was born in Korea but moved
to upstate NY with her family when she was 8 years old. Her family moved
to SC shortly thereafter and her parents have been living in the
same house in SC for over 25 years. She tells us that she is glad to be
back in the south closer to her parents and away from all that snow.
Her father is a recently retired Physics professor and her only sibling
is a brother who is a Computer Graphics professor in Washington, DC.
Her mother who is certified as an elementary school teacher, claims
responsibility for all the Ph.Ds in the family and jokes proudly that if
the immediate family is together at dinner and someone asks for Dr. Hahn,
3 people would get up out of the table of 4. Juliet graduated
from Irmo High School (with honors, commended student) and received
her BS Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa at the University of South Carolina,
both in Columbia, SC. She completed her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry
at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. After her Ph.D. she
taught Organic Chemistry for 5 years, most recently at SUNY, Cortland.
She also did postdoctoral research at Columbia University, NY and the University
of Minnesota, Minneapolis. She is teaching Organic Chemistry lecture and
lab and is setting up her research lab here at ASU. She will be doing research
in stereoselective synthetic methodology in heterocyclic amines of pharmaceutical
and biochemical interest. She has several independent noncollaborative
research projects ongoing from her previous faculty positions and would
like to work with ASU students on her research projects.
Dr. Maung Kyaw received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry
form the Imperial College of Sciences and Technologies, University of London.
Good
luck: to Drs. Paul Nave and Norman Trautwein, who
retired this past Summer. We will miss them both. They played a vital
role in the Department and helped educate numerous students. They
will be hard to replace. As you can see, Norm decided to go out
in style and ride off into the sunset (even though it was 9:45 in the morning).
Editor's
note: I guess he couldn't wait to start his life of leisure.
Congratulations: to Dr. Robyn Hannigan, who was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure, and to Dr. Bao-An Li, who accepted the position of interim Chair of the department.
New College: The College of Arts and Sciences is no more, as it has been divided into two Colleges: Sciences and Mathematics, and Arts and Humanities. The College of Sciences and Mathematics will contain the Departments of Chemistry and Physics, Biology, Mathematics, and Computer Science. The new College will be expected to work with ABI (Arkansas Biosciences Institute) and continue with the Environmental Sciences Ph.D. program. Dr. Hector Flores is the new Dean of Sciences and Mathematics. Dr. Andy Sustich, who served as interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, serves as interim Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Other news:
Federally funded McNair grant awarded to ASU A program that
will help students achieve their goal of graduate education will be coming
to Arkansas State University. ASU was successful with its application
for a grant under the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program,
administered by the federal TRIO program. The grant of $198,321 over
a four-year period will support the program at ASU. Participants
in the McNair program are students from disadvantaged backgrounds who have
demonstrated strong academic potential. McNair institutions, like
ASU, work closely with the participants through their undergraduate requirements,
encourage their entrance into graduate programs, and track their progress
to successful completion of advanced degrees. By helping students prepare
for the challenges of advanced research and scholarship, the program will
help boost the number of doctoral degrees awarded to students from underrepresented
backgrounds. Dr. Andy Sustich and Dr. Robyn Hannigan prepared
the grant proposal.
Dr. Tillman Kennon was elected President Elect (2004) of the Arkansas Science Teachers Association (ASTA) during the Fall 2003 Arkansas Conference on Teaching (ACT) in Little Rock. He will assume the duties of President for 2005 and Past President for 2006.
Bao-An Li, became a member of the Editorial Board for 2003-2007 for the journal High Energy Physics and Nuclear Physics; became a member of the International Advisory Committee for the World Consensus Initiatives of Intermediate Energy Nuclear Physics; was named one of the two coordinators of the RIA (Rare Isotope Accelerator) reaction theory working group at an international workshop in Arizona in Nov., 2003. The construction of RIA was recently announced by DOE as one of the top science priorities in the United States.
Department
Seminar Series: The 2003 calendar year had a diverse group
of presentations. The Department Seminar Series featured Dr. Joe
Natowitz, Texas A&M University, Dr. Susan Davis Allen, Arkansas
State University, Dr. L. W. Chen, Cyclotron Institute and Physics Department,
Texas A&M University, Dr. Pawel Danielewicz, National Superconducting
Cyclotron Laboratory
and Department of Physics & Astronomy, Michigan State University,
Dr. Charles Gale, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, Dr. Bill Durham,
University of Arkansas, Dr. Yu-Gang Ma, Cyclotron Institute, Texas A&M
University and Shanghai Institute of Nuclear Research, Chinese Academy
of Sciences, Dr. Edsel A. Ammons, Arkansas State University, Dr.
Ramin Daghigh, Arkansas State University (twice), Dr. Steffen A. Bass,
Duke University and Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Dr. Ted Burkey,
University of Memphis. The seminars are open to the public.
Feel free to attend.
During the past year, the Department of Chemistry and Physics has continued to publish articles in national/international journals and state/regional journals. In addition, scholarly presentations have been made at state, regional, national and international meetings. Many of these papers have been presented by students who participated in the research. Our students have played an important role in the research and presentations of our Department. The department has also received funding from outside sources and may receive additional funding from grants which are now in review. A listing of our activities is found below:
Grants: Several of the Faculty have received grants this year. Funding helps support research and teaching efforts in the department. Grants include:
Publications: The Department has been active in publishing their research. The publications include:
Presentations: The faculty and students of the Department of Chemistry and Physics have made numerous presentations over the past year. These include:
Congratulations: Congratulations to Jan Annaratone for her second place award at the 87th Meeting of the Arkansas Academy of Science, Fayetteville, AR. Her presentation was "Preliminary IR study of the Reaction of CpRu(CO)2+ with organic thiols." Jan is an MS student working with Dr. Mark Draganjac.
Summer Research: Andrea Hausman (an undergraduate working with Dr. Mark Draganjac) received a BRIN Summer Undergraduate Student Research Fellowship. Andrea worked with Dr. Bill Durham at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
2003 Who's Who Recipients: Congratulations to Bradley Taylor Hamilton of Jonesboro, chemistry, emphasis in the pre-pharmacy program; Shelley LunBeck of Jonesboro, chemistry; Juan Sebastian Martinez of Pasto(n), Colombia, South America, chemistry, emphasis in the pre-med program; Leigh Ann Pruett of Batesville, chemistry; Kimberly D. Robertson of El Dorado, chemistry; and Jennifer Woodruff of Des Arc, chemistry.
Society of Physics Students: The ASU chapter of the Society of Physics Students was active this past year. Highlights include funded trips to the National Center for Physical Acoustics at Ole Miss and an overnight trip to the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. The president of SPS for both this year and last is Mr. Bret Yount. Dr. Bruce Johnson is the faculty advisor to SPS. (870)972-3087 ext.262.
Student
Affiliates, American Chemical Society: Under
Dr. Mark Draganjac,
the ACS group received a Commendable Chapter Award from the National ACS
for the 2002/03 academic year. The Student Affiliates chapter also
received the ASU Outstanding Departmental Organization for the 2002/2003
academic year for their continued activities. Congratulations to
all who made the ACS group a success. Officers were
Jeremy Lamb
(President), Jennifer Woodruff (Vice-President) and Casey Oliver
(Secretary-Treasurer). For more information, see the
ACS
Student Affiliate web page