Successful Students

From the beginnings of Coe, our chemistry majors have gone on to become some of the most accomplished professionals in their fields. A few of our more notable alumni are profiled below.

Stookey, S.D. '36; B.A. — After receiving his bachelor’s degree in chemistry and mathematics from Coe in 1936, S. Donald Stookey went on to earn a M.Sc. from Lafayette College and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then took a position at Corning Glass Works, where he remained for 47 years. His name appeared on over 60 patents with Corning, but his best known discovery led to the creation of a product called CorningWare®. Find out more in a profile from the American Ceramic Society Bulletin.

Sabacky, M. Jerome '61; B.A. — Jerry Sabacky graduated from Coe magna cum laude with a degree in chemistry in 1961, and immediately began a Ph.D. program in organic chemistry at the University of Illinois. Upon receiving his degree in 1966, he began his career in industrial research with Monsanto. His expertise in the synthesis of chiral ligands was quickly put to use as part of a three-person team working in the area of asymetric catalysis. The work led to the first commercially viable synthesis of a chiral molecule – the well-known Parkinson’s disease drug, L-dopa. This breakthrough research was recognized in 2001 with a Nobel Prize for the team’s leader, William Knowles.

Banks, R. Darryl ’72; B.A. — Darryl Banks was a Rhodes Scholar and attended Oxford to do doctoral work in chemistry and biochemistry. After returning to the U.S., he moved into the world of environmental policy. After spending eight years as Deputy Commissioner for Environmental Quality at the New York State Department of Environmental Quality, he became Director of Environment and Technology Program and Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute where his group focused on strategic corporate environmental issues, including groundbreaking work on environmental accounting and environmental performance metrics. He is currently an assoicate partner at Sustainable Value Partners in Washington, D.C.

Coe has graduated 71 chemistry majors in the past 10 years. Of this number, approximately 50 percent headed off to graduate school in chemistry or related fields. These students are routinely accepted into the top programs in the nation — Stanford, Berkeley, CalTech, Cornell, Wisconsin, Johns Hopkins. Another 20 percent enter graduate or professional schools in the health sciences (medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, opthamology). A significant number (13%) have pursued careers teaching high school science. Still others have gone directly into professional careers in industry, government laboratories, and regulatory agencies. Here are some examples of what recent Coe graduates are doing — find out more by following the links.

Graduate school in chemistry

• Heather Edvenson '05 uses the Raman microscope to identify iron oxides. Heather is now a Ph.D. student in chemistry at Cornell University.

  Carissa Wiederholt '00 recently completed her Ph.D. in biochemistry at the Johns Hopkins University. While there, she was one of twenty national recipients of an American Chemical Society Organic Division Fellowship for her work on the effects of formamidopyrimidine DNA lesions and analogs. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Wisconsin’s McCardle Laboratory for Cancer Research.
• Lizzie Johnson '02 is carrying out atmospheric chemistry research at the University of Iowa in the lab of Professor Vicki Grassian. Lizzie was recently selected as one of fifty graduate students from across the nation to attend the 55th annual meeting of Nobel Laureates from chemistry, physics, and physiology/medicine, to be held during the summer of 2005 in Lindau, Germany.

Health Sciences

• Danielle (Sandsmark) Scheidenhelm '01 turned a January Term internship at the Mayo Clinic into a full semester internship her junior year. Upon graduating from Coe magna cum laude, she entered the MD/Ph.D. program at Washington University. She is currently working in the lab of Dr. David Guttman of the neuroscience program.
• Todd Wenck '96 graduated summa cum laude from Coe while also lettering in baseball for four years. He completed his M.D. at the University of Iowa, and is currently engaged in family practice in Bettendorf, Iowa.

Teachers

• Chad Zrudsky '01 was president of the student body and ran track while he was at Coe. At Marion High School, "Mr. Z" teaches science, coaches track and cross country, and is faculty advisor to the Student Senate.
• Colin Killmer '98 is teaching physics and chemistry at Lawrence High School in Lawrence, Kansas. He has created an award-winning program at his high school to help incoming students get off to a better start, and has been active in incorporating technology into the classroom.

Related Areas

• Cole Goater '02 received a very competitive fellowship to enter the masters degree program in forensic science at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He is currently a forensic scientist and firearms examiner in the office of the Indianapolis-Marion County Forensic Services Agency.
• Andy Smothers '00 added a chemistry degree from Coe to his degree and experience in computer science. He is now in a bioinformatics Ph.D. program at the University of Iowa, where he is developing a database that integrates clincal and gene expression data.