Dean's Desk
Renewing our Infrastructure
CLAYTON
H. HEATHCOCK, DEAN
“My two highest priorities during my five-year term as dean have
been to renew our infrastructure and to make substantial progress toward
building our endowment.”
Sidebar:
Distinguished Chairs and Professorships in the college
Features
News
from Chemical Engineering
Alumni Relations
Introducing the CHEMillenniums!
Faculty Highlights
Tan Hall: Five Years of Research, told by the professors
College and Campus News
Endowed Chairs and Distinguished Professorships: the stories behind the six new endowments
There
is always a buzz
of excitement in August when a new academic year begins. The Bay Area
is emerging from our typically foggy summer into the warm and clear months
of September and October. Thousands of undergraduate students converge
on the campus from all over California, and a new class of entering doctoral
candidates augments our year-round graduate cohort.
Structural Improvements
This fall our undergraduates and new graduate students are arriving on
campus to a College of Chemistry complex that looks much changed from
its appearance of the last two years. The FEMA seismic projects in Hildebrand
and Latimer Halls are complete and the construction fences are almost
all gone. Latimer Hall is now sheathed in a strong new shell of reinforced
concrete. The Hildebrand Hall seismic shear walls aremostly hidden from
view as they are along wall lines that previously existed. There are some
large metal seismic braces on the plaza level outside the north and
south windows of the Chemistry Library and inside the building on the
second and third floors. You can see before and after photos of Latimer
and Hildebrand Halls here.
In addition to the seismic strengthening work that was completed since
my last Dean’s Desk column, we have also completed several major
laboratory renovation projects. The most extensive of these was a $4 million
renovation of the entire second and third floors of Hildebrand to make
it suitable as surge laboratory space for the eight structural biology
groups who are being displaced from Stanley Hall in order to make way
for a new integrated health science building. The eight groups being relocated
to upper Hildebrand include professors Jack Kirsch, Jamie Cate,
and Jennifer Doudna, all of whom have joint appointments in chemistry
and MCB.
We have also completed significant renovations of laboratory and office
space for Steve Leone, Haw Yang, and Dean Toste,
the three new faculty members who joined the chemistry department in July
of 2002. The most ambitious of these renovations was 1600 square feet
of office and laboratory space for Toste on the sixth floor of Latimer.
This significant laboratory upgrade was made possible largely through
funds donated to the Center for New Directions in Organic Synthesis (CNDOS)
by Bristol-Myers Squibb, a sponsoring member of this center. You can read
more about CNDOS at their website.
With the completion of the Toste renovation, we took another step toward
our goal of complete renovation of all of the synthetic chemistry space
in Latimer Hall. These essential laboratory upgrades have occurred with
the financial help of a large consortium, including the National Science
Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, University of California
general funds, corporate and individual donations, and a very significant
contribution from an anonymous donor.
My two highest priorities during my five-year term as dean have been to
renew our infrastructure and to make substantial progress toward building
our endowment. In the previous paragraphs, I have reviewed some of the
recent accomplishments on the infrastructure front. In all, during the
last three years, we have been able to renovate a total of 103,000 square
feet of laboratory and office space. To put this in perspective, this
is 42 percent of the total space available for renovation (excluding Tan
Hall, which was built five years ago, and a number of laboratories that
were fully renovated in the 1990s.) In the next two years, we are looking
forward to several more significant renovations, and I will report on
these in due course.
New College Center
One improvement that I hope to be able to accomplish is the creation of
a new “College of Chemistry Center,” a major upgrade to the
outdoor plaza area that surrounds Hildebrand Hall, the sunken outdoor
area on the B-level of Hildebrand and Latimer, and the Hildebrand breezeway.
Preliminary plans have been drafted and may be viewed at the following
college web address:
http://www.chemistry.berkeley.edu/center.ppt.
This is a significant project that will enhance the community spirit of
the college. I will be seeking private funding for this project over the
next year. This is an excellent opportunity for one of our alumni to contribute
to the college in a meaningful way; it is our intention to name the new
center after a major donor (that is, comparable to our very popular Bixby
Commons).
Increasing our endowment
We are also making excellent progress in building our endowment. Elsewhere
in this issue, you will read about the creation of a number of new Endowed
Chairs and Distinguished Professorships. With the most recent additions,
we will soon have a total of eleven endowed chairs or distinguished professorships.
Of course, with a faculty as distinguished as ours, our task in this regard
is far from complete— we still need at least fifteen more endowed
chairs if we are to continue to be competitive with our peer institutions
in recruitment and retention of faculty.
Introducing the CHEMillenniums
One of the most pleasant parts of my job as dean is hosting our various
annual alumni “era groups.” As you probably know, we have three
very active alumni groups, “Alumni of the G. N. Lewis Era” (pre-1944),
“Alumni of the Cupola Era” (1945–1963), and “Free
Radicals” (1964–1979). Each of these groups meets annually for
a brunch or luncheon on campus. These convocations are sociable and informative
for the alumni and a way for me and our faculty to renew acquaintances
with our students and coworkers from prior years. These three groups will
soon grow to four—a new group, the
CHEMilleniums, representing the period 1980–1999, is in its nascent
stages. The CHEMillenium alumni group will be announcing its first event
soon, and I hope to see many of you there.
GO BEARS!
Finally, although it has nothing whatsoever to do with chemistry or chemical
engineering, our Saturday afternoons have become a little more interesting
this year as we have watched the Cal Bear footballers move out to a 5–3
record, including decisive victories over Michigan State and Washington.
Go Bears!
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Related
sites:
College of Chemistry proposed center
Endowed Chairs and Distinguished Professorships
The
College of Chemistry is proud to announce that six new endowed chairs
and distinguished professorships have been established or are pending
approval, to make a current total of eleven in the college. More information
about the funding and establishment of these honorary position can be
found here. The administrative and research chairs at the College of Chemistry
are:
The
G. N. Lewis Chair (to be occupied by the Dean of the College of Chemistry)
The
Katherine and Warren Schlinger Distinguished Professorship (occupied by
the Chair of the chemical engineering department)
The
Joel Hildebrand Distinguished Professorship (to be occupied by the Chair
of the chemistry department)
The
Kenneth S. Pitzer Distinguished Professorship in Theoretical Chemistry
The
Glenn T. Seaborg Chair in Chemistry
The
Melvin Calvin Distinguished Professorship in Chemical Biology
The
Henry Rapoport Chair in Organic Chemistry
The
Aldo DeBenedictis Distinguished Professorship in Chemistry
The
Gerald E. K. Branch Distinguished Professorship in Chemistry
The
Hubbard Howe, Jr. Distinguished Professorship in Biochemical Engineering
The
ChevronTexaco Chair in Chemistry (to be occupied by a non-tenured faculty
member nominated by the chemistry department)
College
of Chemistry UC
Berkeley