Senior chemistry major Dustin Williams and sophomore chemistry major Victoria Kong both provided research presentations at the Montana Space Grant Consortium (MSGC) Student Research Symposium held at MSU-Bozeman on April 18.
Dustin has been very active in Carroll’s new Integrated Lab course, which combines the laboratory requirements from Physical Chemistry, Instrumental Methods, Advanced Organic Chemistry, and Advanced Inorganic Chemistry. This new course is a yearlong laboratory course that meets twice a week for the entire senior year. The research interests of various faculty have been incorporated into the curriculum, and the students work on long term projects over the course of the semester. Dustin has been particularly engaged, and was presenting results from a project he was working on in the Integrated lab.
Victoria presented a poster on her summer research project with Dr. John Rowley. She works with Dr. Rowley on understanding the chemical mechanisms behind harvesting renewable energy. She has been awarded the MSGC’s ARES (Awards for Research in Engineering and Science) award twice, and used the money to help pay her way to the National American Chemical Society this past March, which was in Denver, Colorado. She presented her results there as well. Over 15,000 people from all over the world attend to this meeting.
The MSGC has been very generous in their funding of chemistry at Carroll. In addition to Victoria’s ARES awards, MSGC also provided funding for faculty to develop some of the curriculum changes associated with the Integrated Lab.
“The MSGC Symposium was a fabulous place for these students to present their research. The guest speakers were outstanding, and getting to share their results with other scientists from around the state in a collegial environment is an excellent experience for them,” said Carroll chemistry professor Dr. Caroline Pharr.