Dr. Jeffery L. Coffer, Professor of Chemistry, was honored at the TCU Convocation on September 8, 2009, by Chancellor Victor Boschini as the winner of the 2009 Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Achievement as a Teacher-Scholar.  Representing the College of Science and Engineering, Professor Coffer was selected from a group of nine distinguished nominees, one from each college at TCU.  The Chancellor's Award, which is presented annually, consists of an engraved plaque and a check for $20,000.  In addition, Jeff's photograph will be displayed prominently in the TCU library along with those of previous awardees.  Jeff is the fourth faculty member in the TCU Chemistry Department to be so honored, joining colleagues Bill Watson, Bill Smith, and Bob Neilson.

Chemistry Grad Student, Nicholas (Nick) Smith is one of only nine graduate students nationwide selected to receive a ACSMEDI Predoctoral Fellowship for the 2009-2010 academic year.  The awards, consisting of a $24,000 stipend, are granted by the Medicinal Chemistry division of the American Chemical Society to predoctoral students in their third or fourth year of graduate study.  Nick is currently in his third year of study under the supervision of Professor Sergei Dzyuba.  Congratulations to Nick and Sergei!

Dr. Benjamin Janesko joined the department this year as a tenure-track assistant professor in the area of physical/computational chemistry.  Dr. Janesko is from western Pennsylvania where he did undergraduate work with a biochemistry emphasis at Allegheny College and then earned his PhD at Carnegie-Mellon University (2005) under the supervision of David Yaron.  More recently, Ben was a National Library of Medicine Postdoctoral Fellow at Rice University in the research group of Gustavo Scuseria.  In addition to beginning his independent research career in computational chemistry, Ben is teaching Physical Chemistry at TCU.

Mrs. Julie Fry, a part-time graduate student in chemistry, will also be a full-time Instructor in the department for the 2009-2010 academic year.  Mrs. Fry earned her BS degree (1989) at Rice University and, since 1997, has been Chair of the Science Department at Southwest Christian School in Fort Worth where she regularly teaches both AP Chemistry and AP biology.  At TCU this year, Julie is teaching one of the large lecture sections (200+ students) of General Chemistry while continuing work on her PhD project in inorganic chemistry under the supervision of Anne Richards.