University of Richmond

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Tenure Track Assistant Professor in Organic Chemistry

The University of Richmond, a highly selective, private, primarily undergraduate institution offering ACS-certified degrees in chemistry and biochemistry, seeks to fill a tenure track position at the Assistant Professor level in Organic Chemistry.  In exceptional cases, a more senior appointment may be possible. The individual we seek will be a highly effective teacher in organic and advanced organic chemistry and will be expected to establish and maintain an active, externally funded research program involving undergraduates.  The chemistry department graduates more than 30 chemistry and biochemistry undergraduate majors each year and is staffed with faculty who are committed teachers and active research scientists.  Our excellent support staff, instrumentation, and recently renovated and expanded facilities are conducive to supporting a high level of teaching and research activity.  Applicants should submit a curriculum vita, a research plan, and a teaching philosophy, and arrange for academic transcripts and three letters of reference to be sent to: Organic Chemistry Search, attn. Carol Parish, Department of Chemistry, University of Richmond, Richmond, VA 23173.  Applications will be considered beginning Oct. 1, 2008. The University of Richmond is committed to increasing the diversity of its faculty and strongly encourages applications from women and minorities.  For more information on the department, resources, and teaching responsibilities, please visit our Web site.

More information about the position:

Typical Teaching Load:  5 courses per year.  Lecture and laboratory sections each count as one teaching unit for faculty.  For instance, a typical 3-course load for an organic faculty member might be 1 section of organic lecture and 2 lab sections of organic lab.  Students begin their study of organic in the spring semester of their first year and finish the second half of the course in the fall semester of their sophomore year. We teach a 1-semester introductory chemistry course; we cover about ¾ of the content of a typical year-long intro course; the other ¼ goes into a fourth semester course focused on Inorganic Chemistry.  

We also offer “trailing” sections of intro and organic to catch those students who didn’t get started right away.  Our organic lecture sections are capped at 36 students and typically run with 25-35 students.  Additionally, each year we offer one upper level organic course such as Medicinal Chemistry or Advanced Organic.  Some of our upper level courses are team taught.

Resources for Teaching:  Currently, our organic faculty are John Gupton, Wade Downey and Michelle Hamm who are often assisted by Emma Goldman.  These faculty are ably assisted by three Directors and a Lab Manager.  Rob Miller (Ph.D. Organic) is the Director of Organic Laboratories and he is responsible for the day-to- day operation of the laboratory sections, working with faculty colleagues to design experiments and teaching.  Tim Smith (Ph.D. Physical) is the Director of Instrumentation and he is responsible for the operation, maintenance and training of all of our scientific instrumentation.   In addition to Rob and Tim, René Kanters (Ph.D. Inorganic) is our Director for Computer Assisted Science Education and is available to help with issues related to computing and NMR.  Russ Collins is the Laboratory Manager for the Organic and Biochemistry labs and he is responsible for lab prep, as well as some ordering of lab supplies.  

Research Space: Each tenure-stream faculty member is assigned a 600 sq ft research laboratory.  We’ve recently completed a renovation of the Gottwald Center for the Sciences and we have specifically left blank the space for the new organic hire so that customization is possible.

Instrumentation: The Chemistry Department at the University of Richmond prides itself on having the latest in modern instrumentation for chemical and biochemical analysis.  Our instrumentation resources include high field NMR (300 and 500 MHz instruments) and high-resolution mass spectrometry equipment (QTOF and MALDI-TOF) to support the teaching and research enterprise. More information about our instrumentation is available by contacting Tim Smith.

Information about students:  

  • Ranked one of the best liberal arts universities in the nation by U.S. News & World Report
  • Ranked in the top 35 nationally for undergraduate research by U.S. News & World Report
  • 2,795 undergraduate students (51 percent women, 12 percent underrepresented minorities)
  • SAT Test scores  CR + M1220 – 1350 (class of 2011)
  • 2008-2009 first year student profile
  • Typically 50 or more students stay on campus each summer to do research full time with a chemistry faculty member.

Departmental information:

  • 14 tenure-stream faculty (Abrash, Bell, Dattelbaum, Dominey, Donald, Downey, Gentile, Goldman, Gupton, Hamm, Leopold, Myers, Parish, Stevenson)
  • Four Ph.D. Directors (Case, Kanters, Miller and Smith)
  • Four staff (Collins, Joseph (shared with biology), Mallory, and Wimbush (shared with physics))
  • We graduate each year: 10-25 chemistry majors; 20-25 biochemistry majors
  • We mentored more than 53 students doing full time research in the summer of 2008; more than 86 students did research with chemistry faculty for credit during the 07-08 academic year

Recent student and faculty accomplishments:

  • More than 18 peer-reviewed papers published in 2007; 14 in 2006, 14 in 2005, 15 in 2004
  • Five Goldwater Scholars in the last 3 years; 2 Fulbright awards in the last 2 years; 1 Marshall Scholar in 2007
  • 124+ presentations by students and faculty at regional and national meetings in the last 5 years
  • Faculty raised $2,694,278 in external funding for research and educational projects over the last 5 years

Recent interdisciplinary activities

  • 2008 – HHMI awards $1.4 million to UR to support interdisciplinary, quantitative approaches to science;
  • 2007 – Merck/AAAS award to support research at the interface of chemistry and biology;
  • 2006 – UR receives a Beckman award to support undergraduate research in chemistry and biology
  • Research with undergraduates is a hallmark of the science and math programs at UR - in the summer of 2008, there were 145 undergraduate research students working in UR faculty labs, of which 29 percent were funded internally and 71 percent were funded with external grants (NSF, NIH, Research Corporation, Dreyfus Foundation, ACS-PRF, HHMI, Merck-AAAS, Beckman, etc.)

Recent departmental outreach activities:

  • Annual two-day middle/high school student Structure Elucidation Workshop
  • Hosted Math and Science Center Chemistry Teacher-in-Service Day
  • Participate in HHMI Summer Research Program for entering first year students; preference given to students from groups under-represented in the sciences
  • Various faculty host high school teachers and/or students in full-time research experiences each summer

Other information about the University of Richmond:

http://www.richmond.edu/facts/index.html

http://admissions.richmond.edu/profile/index.html