Bates College chemistry professor Thomas Wenzel has received the American Chemical Society’s 25th Award for Research at an Undergraduate Institution.

Wenzel, a Lewiston resident who came to Bates in 1981, is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Chemistry. The ACS award recognizes faculty at undergraduate institutions whose research has been widely recognized and who have contributed significantly to both the field of chemistry and the professional development of students.

The ACS award “is the single largest honor that a chemical researcher at an undergraduate institution could hope for,” says Rachel Narehood Austin, chair of the Bates chemistry department. “For Tom, it’s a profound recognition of his substantial accomplishments over a very vibrant career.”

The award, including grants of $5,000 to Wenzel and $5,000 to Bates, bestows priceless professional validation. It acknowledges the distinctive challenges of conducting meaningful research at undergraduate institutions, in contrast to large research universities that offer extensive infrastructure, big budgets and the assistance of experienced graduate students in the lab.

As an analytical chemist, Wenzel conducts research on the development of methods to identify and quantify chemicals in mixtures.

Specifically, he studies techniques for discerning chirality — a phenomenon in which two molecules are mirror images of each other. In some cases, such compounds have significant reactive differences. A “right-handed” molecule of a given chemical might have beneficial medical properties, but its “left-handed” equivalent will be toxic.

Wenzel is known internationally for this research that has resulted in more than 120 publications and attracted some $2 million in external grants, including six rounds of funding from the National Science Foundation.

During Wenzel’s time at Bates, 107 students have collaborated in his research and 76 have co-authored peer-reviewed publications about the work. He has been particularly active in involving students from groups historically underrepresented in the sciences in his work.

“The student is involved in all the stages of implementing a project,” he says. “Students are expected to become equal partners — offering suggestions, going through the literature, sorting out problems along the way.”

Courtney O’Farrell, a 2007 Bates graduate in biochemistry, is a former Wenzel student and research collaborator now researching anti-cancer drugs and pursuing a doctorate at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She spent a summer in Wenzel’s lab designing and testing molecules for use in nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer analysis.

“Tom had five students in his lab, and we all had our own projects, which really allowed us to gain confidence and independence,” she says. “He was good about being available for questions and advice, but also gave me the independence to come up with experiments on my own. It was the perfect balance.”

She adds, “Tom was an amazing mentor. He taught me how to have confidence in myself and to be an independent thinker.”

Wenzel calls the ACS award doubly gratifying, honoring both his direct contribution to chemistry — his ongoing research — and the ripple effect created by inspiring students to pursue careers in science.

He and Bates are a good match in this regard, he explains, citing the level of support and encouragement the college gives to student research. People, he says, are “inherently interested in how things work in the world. That’s what science really is. In doing research, students really start to participate in exploring the unknown.”

Thomas Wenzel, Charles A. Dana Professor of Chemistry at Bates, has received a grant worth nearly $100,000 to support a curriculum development project in analytical chemistry.

The National Science Foundation awarded Wenzel a $99,278 “Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement” grant for a project titled Collaborative Research: Development of Contextual E-Learning Modules for Analytical Chemistry.

Working with professor Cynthia Larive of the University of California, Riverside, Wenzel is developing an entire online undergraduate curriculum in analytical chemistry that will be disseminated via the Analytical Sciences Digital Library.

The Analytical Sciences Digital Library is a NSF-funded digital resource that collects and publishes discovery materials pertinent to curricular innovations and technical resources in the analytical sciences. Wenzel has been involved with the ASDL since its inception and is a member of its advisory board. Larive is a managing director of the library.

The key to the curriculum “is the use of collaborative learning in place of a lecture mode of instruction,” Wenzel says, “and problem-based or project-based labs in place of the traditional ‘cookbook labs’ that tend to characterize chemistry courses.”

The collaborative learning model means that topics will be developed through small-group activities in class, with instructors serving as facilitators to help students work through the problems.

The lab component will eschew a traditional approach that favors prescribed, step-by-step confirmation of predetermined outcomes. Instead, the lab work will comprise real chemical analysis problems for which students will have to design and implement their own measurement techniques and methods.

Wenzel, a 1999 recipient of the American Chemical Society’s National Analytical Chemistry Education Award, already employs collaborative learning and project-based labs in his courses.

The NSF grant is a so-called Phase 1 award. If the foundation deems the development and progress of this project successful, Wenzel, Larive and their collaborators may request a Phase 2 award for an additional $500,000 in two years.

That funding will enable them to continue developing topical units included within an analytical chemistry curriculum. “What I will do is expand my materials to fulfill the breadth of topics taught across the spectrum of analytical chemistry courses,” Wenzel explains. He’ll also write instructor manuals for the material.

“The expansion of topics and the manuals will facilitate the adoption of these methods and materials by other instructors throughout the country and the world.”

On behalf of the chemistry department, Charles A. Dana Professor of Chemistry Thomas Wenzel has received a two-year grant totaling more than $100,000 to support a teaching and research fellow at Bates.

The grant was awarded by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, New York City. The foundation will award $55,000 for the Dreyfus Fellow’s first year and $50,000 for the second. The foundation’s Scholar/Fellow Program for Undergraduate Institutions aims to give recent recipients of a doctoral degree a head start on their academic teaching careers.

“A lot of people don’t appreciate, when they come to a place like Bates, how to balance their activities between teaching and scholarly work,” Wenzel explains. Finding that balance can be a struggle. “This program is designed to provide first-hand experience with how to balance both and how to succeed at doing both,” he says, “with, in a sense, very little at stake, because you’re not in a tenure-track position.”

The search for the Dreyfus Fellow began this month. Starting at Bates this autumn, the fellow will assist Wenzel with both his teaching and his research, which explores processes for determining the molecular orientation of certain compounds that can exist in either “right-handed” and “left-handed” forms, with dramatically different properties in some cases.

Wenzel says the Dreyfus program benefits everyone involved. As noted above, the award will improve the chances of some young academic making it through those challenging early years. “I clearly have a concern about wanting to see people who are considering a career as a faculty member at an undergraduate institution flourish in that career,” Wenzel says. “That’s really the most positive aspect of the program, and what interested me most in it.”

The program will enable Wenzel himself to gain ground on his research, thanks to the fellow’s participation in both the lab and the classroom, because a reduced teaching load will afford Wenzel more research time. The college and the chemistry department will benefit from the fresh perspective, energy and ideas of a newly minted Ph.D.

Most important, Wenzel’s research students will benefit from the Dreyfus Fellow’s mentoring. “This person, just having finished graduate school, will be able to talk with those students about what graduate school is really like and what kinds of career opportunities exist,” Wenzel says.

Wenzel, whose teaching methods and research results have won him a variety of honors, received his first Dreyfus Scholar/Fellow award in 1990. Only six of the Dreyfus grants are awarded annually. “It’s something of an honor to get it,” he says.

Check out the chemistry department’s website here.