SPARTANBURG, S.C. – The Department of Chemistry at Wofford College has received a 2017 Pittsburgh Conference Memorial National College Grant for $10,000 to update and enhance its chemistry instrumentation capabilities in the classroom and for faculty and student research purposes.

“This grant, along with matching funds from Wofford College, will allow the Department of Chemistry to purchase much-needed equipment for our laboratories,” says Dr. Zachary S. Davis, visiting assistant professor of chemistry, who led the effort to obtain the grant. “These updates in the labs will affect students in a variety of courses and will provided expanded opportunities both in the general curriculum and research activities. The faculty look forward to incorporating new laboratory experiments that provide students with more instrumental experience.”

Wofford recently began a process of updating, replacing and expanding the instrumental suite in its chemistry labs, and the grant will provide the ability to continue to update the instrumentation in the spectroscopy suite and provide broader instrumental support to all of the college’s lab sections with new systems, Davis says.

“With about 70 declared majors and seven full-time teaching faculty members in the Department of Chemistry, we have a thriving program that demands up-to-date chemical instrumentation,” says Dr. Mike Sosulski, Wofford’s provost. “We thank the Pittsburgh Conference for this valuable grant that will enhance our program immensely.”

Wofford is one of 14 institutions selected for funding from 59 proposals for grants provided through the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy Inc. (a Pennsylvania non-profit corporation) and its co-sponsoring technical societies, the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh and the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh. Grants are awarded to small college science departments for the purchase of scientific equipment, audio-visual or other teaching aids, and/or library materials for use in the teaching of science at the undergraduate level.