Current Priorities
Faculty Recruitment and Retention
The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry must be able to compete nationally with peer institutions, which are becoming increasingly aggressive in their pursuit of our faculty. The availability of adequate endowments for professorships, chairs, and excellence funds is critical to our success in this effort. Although we have a number of such endowments, more are needed if we are to expand and retain our exceptional faculty.
At more than 38:1, the department's student/faculty ratio exceeds the University's overall ratio of 20:1, making it one of the highest at UT. We must reduce this ratio so we can better educate our students, strengthen current research programs, and develop new initiatives in emerging areas of chemistry and biochemistry.
Chairman's Academic Excellence Fund
The department has established an endowment target of $5 million to provide discretionary funds for use by the chair to respond quickly to urgent, unanticipated needs. These monies will also support a variety of important programmatic activities such as seminars, symposia, graduate student recruitment, and other activities that are not funded by the University. The Larry R. Faulkner Endowed Chair in Chemistry & Biochemistry is being created and named in honor of our department alumnus and former president.. Contributions to support the department may be made to this endowment or to other discretionary departmental funds.
Mallet Chemistry Library
Faculty and students increasingly rely on electronic resources provided by their academic libraries to support their research and coursework. The Mallet Chemistry Library currently lacks the electronic archives of many of the most important chemistry and biochemistry journals. To regain its stature among the most comprehensive chemistry libraries in the United States, the library must acquire these archives at a cost of approximately $500,000. A fund is being established to achieve this goal.
