Thomas Wenzel, the Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Biochemistry, nationally known as a pioneer in teaching hands-on learning to undergraduates through research, was named to The Analytical Scientist journal’s “Power List” as one of the world’s top 25 science mentors and educators over the last decade.

The Analytical Scientist Power List for 2023 recognizes “excellence and impact” over the past decade in four categories: innovators and trailblazers, leaders and advocates, connectors and interdisciplinarians, and mentors and educators. 

The curated listamong the 25 mentors and educators highlighted by the publication, which focuses on the latest developments and advancements in analytical chemistry and related disciplines. Moreover, of the 100 people from around the world named to the journal’s list, Wenzel was the only one from academia from an undergraduate institution.

“I’m very proud of the research I was able to accomplish over my career, especially those where I engaged undergraduates in the research.”

Tom Wenzel

“I would have been very happy just to make the list. But when you look back at the history of that list, to get a No. 3 ranking was a nice surprise,” said Wenzel. 

A member of the �ֲ���ý faculty from 1981 to 2020, Wenzel became nationally recognized for teaching undergraduates through active learning in the 1990s. For the remainder of his career, Wenzel remained at the forefront of best practices in chemistry education.

He produced 181 scholarly publications and he was awarded more than $3.75 million in external research and education grants. He published extensively on chirality, a molecular phenomenon that parallels “handedness” in humans, developing techniques to identify molecules that are mirror images of each other but can have different reactive effects. 

But Wenzel is most proud of his work pioneering hands-on learning in the classroom, which was modeled after the work he did at �ֲ���ý with his student researchers in his lab.

Today it’s fairly common for faculty at undergraduate institutions to co-author articles in scholarly journals based on research they conduct with students. That was not the case 40 years ago. Yet Wenzel started doing it in the 1980s and noticed how students helping with research in his lab retained information longer and better than the students who were taught through lectures and recipe-based lab experiences. 

Among Wenzel’s 96 articles focusing on research in his lab, 67 were co-authored by �ֲ���ý students. “For them it was a fairly profound educational experience. It really pushes what the student needs to think about and do and achieve to a new level,” Wenzel said. 

In 1995, Wenzel published “A New Approach to Undergraduate Analytical Chemistry,” a seminal article in the journal Analytical Chemistry on his cutting-edge approach to teaching chemistry. The article went viral — in a snail-mail sense.

“In those days it was mostly pre-email. I got over 200 letters sent to me from around the world asking for a copy of the article, plus more information,” Wenzel said. “Things just took off from there.”

In 1997, Wenzel was invited to speak about his innovative teaching approach at a workshop at the University of Kansas that was funded by the National Science Foundation. His talk focused on “best practices” for teaching chemistry through active learning. It led to Wenzel leading workshops across the country on his active-learning approach. 

“After the 1997 workshops, I spent the next 25 years on efforts to promote active learning,” Wenzel said. 

Wenzel and a group of academics interested in this growing field of science formed an that provided free resources to promote active learning in chemistry. 

In the early 2000s, he served for eight years as the editor of a series on education in the journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry. Between 2008 and 2020, Wenzel received more than $1.4 million in National Science Foundation grants for programs affiliated with the analytical science digital library. 

During those years, awards and recognition flowed Wenzel’s way. 

In 2002, he became the first chemist to receive the Council on Undergraduate Research Fellows Award. He received the 2010 American Chemical Society National Award for Research at an Undergraduate Institution, the designation as a fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2016, and the 2020 George C. Pimentel Award, which is the American Chemical Society’s national award that acknowledges outstanding work in chemical education. 

Before Wenzel retired in 2020, James Weissman ’84 and his wife gave $100,000 to establish the Thomas J. Wenzel Endowed Fund for Undergraduate Chemistry Research to guarantee students could continue to learn chemistry by conducting research at �ֲ���ý.  

“I’m very proud of the research I was able to accomplish over my career, especially those where I engaged undergraduates in the research,” Wenzel said.

In the early 1990s, �ֲ���ý professor Thomas Wenzel began to think that the traditional approach to teaching chemistry — lectures and what he calls “recipe-based” laboratory assignments — was missing something.

For instance, students that Wenzel expected to thrive in his courses scored poorly on exams. Yet, in contrast, the students he hired to perform hands-on research in his �ֲ���ý lab were highly engaged with the material.

“It seemed that the learning that happened in the research work was so much deeper and so much longer-lasting,” Wenzel says. “I realized I needed to make my instructional laboratories more research-like in their approach.”

So in his courses, Wenzel started putting students in groups to puzzle through questions and calculations. He framed his lab assignments as solving problems instead of following recipes. His students engaged more robustly with the material, and exam scores went up.

Dana Professor of Chemistry Tom Wenzel, who will retire in 2020, has been honored with the establishment of a student research fund in his name and an achievement award from the American Chemical Society. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Those simple steps began a pedagogical evolution that has made Wenzel, now the college’s Dana Professor of Chemistry, a national leader in the teaching of chemistry — including pioneering work to create open-access course materials — as well as a model for involving students in research and a prolific researcher.

And at the start of his last year of teaching before retirement from �ֲ���ý in 2020, Wenzel received two major honors that recognize his contributions to his field and to the lives of his students.

“It’s hard to imagine a more gratifying way to end my career.”

In August, the American Chemical Society awarded him its 2019 George C. Pimentel Award for “outstanding contributions to chemical education.”

Soon thereafter, one of Wenzel’s former students paid tribute to his mentor by establishing the Thomas J. Wenzel Endowed Fund for Undergraduate Chemistry Research, to support students conducting summer research on campus.

“It’s hard to imagine a more gratifying way to end my career,” Wenzel says of the two career honors.

+A Few Wenzel Awards

Rachel Austin, who taught at �ֲ���ý from 1995 to 2015, saw firsthand how Wenzel transformed chemistry education.

“Tom has expanded the notion of ‘learning through doing’ to the teaching of chemistry at all levels of the undergraduate curriculum,” says Austin, who is the Diana T. and P. Roy Vagelos Professor of Chemistry at Barnard College and who nominated Wenzel for the Pimentel award.

She adds, “He was well ahead of the wide-scale recognition of the value of inquiry-based learning” in chemistry.

In this summer 2005 image of Tom Wenzel’s typically active research lab, Wenzel (left) and post-graduate research fellow Catherine Dignam (second from left) work with student researchers: from left, Matt Chodomel ’06, Shawna-Kaye Lester ’08, and Monique Brown ’07. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Complementing Wenzel’s accomplishments in chemistry education are his research achievements. He has published extensively on chirality, a molecular phenomenon that parallels “handedness” in humans.

He develops techniques to identify molecules that are mirror images of each other but can have different reactive effects — for example, one form of the drug thalidomide reduces morning sickness, but its mirror image was responsible for birth defects in the 1950s and 60s.

Along the way, Wenzel has become a pioneer in bringing undergraduates into his research lab. Some 128 students — 80 of them women — have worked in his lab since he joined the �ֲ���ý faculty. Throughout his career, Austin says, Wenzel has been “an active proponent for the involvement of women and minorities in science.”

“One of my approaches was to start hiring first-year students out of my general chemistry core course into my research laboratory,” he says, “as a way to provide them a more realistic experience of what it meant to actually do chemistry.”

In addition to his publications on pedagogy, Wenzel has published some 40 articles on undergraduate research, been involved with the national Council on Undergraduate Research, and, in 2010, won the American Chemical Society Research at an Undergraduate Institution Award.

A nationally recognized advocate for undergraduate research, Tom Wenzel (third from right) poses with some of his students in 2015 at the International Chirality Conference. Wenzel chaired the 2015 event, the premier conference in his research field, and �ֲ���ý was the only undergrad school represented. Back row, from left, William Patton ’15, Mira Carey-Hatch ’14, Yolanda Rodriguez ’15, Tom Wenzel, Alison Dowey ’15. Front row, from left, Tayla Duarte ’17, Cira Mollings Puentes ’16, Caroline Holme ’16, Brielle Dalvano ’16, and Anna Berenson ’16.

Of Wenzel’s 96 published research articles, 67 have had �ֲ���ý student co-authors. One of those authors was Jim Weissman ’84, who says he always wanted to study chemistry, but his sophomore classes were a “rocky road.”

Wenzel both encouraged Weissman to stick with the major and helped him as he caught up with course work. Then he hired Weissman to work in his lab.

Wenzel “touched the lives of a lot of chemistry majors.”

For his senior thesis, Weissman studied methods for detecting pharmaceuticals and pollutants and, along with Wenzel and three fellow students, co-authored an article, “Lanthanide ions as luminescent chromophores for liquid chromatographic detection.”

Wenzel “had a unique style, and he touched the lives of a lot of chemistry majors,” Weissman says. “Had he not been at �ֲ���ý, those opportunities that I had would not have been realized.”

That influence is sharply evident in the paper that Weissman coauthored. His fellow authors, Elsie DiBella ’85, Maureen J. Joseph ’83, and Joshua R. Schultz ’83, all earned doctoral degrees. They’ve all forged careers in biotech, as has Weissman, who is now chief operating officer at Dicerna Pharmaceuticals.

Early in this semester, Weissman and his wife, Kyoko Oba Weissman, donated $100,000 to �ֲ���ý to establish the Thomas J. Wenzel Endowed Fund for Undergraduate Chemistry Research, which provides scholarships for students to conduct summer chemistry or biochemistry research on campus.

Tom Wenzel (center) is flanked by donors Jim Weissman ’84 and Kyoko Weissman as they celebrate the establishment in September of the Thomas J. Wenzel Endowed Fund for Undergraduate Chemistry Research. Joining them in Dana Chemistry Hall are, from left, Jake O’Hara ’21, Nick Jones ’20, Shanzeh Rauf ’21, Maddie Murphy ’20, Associate Professor of Chemistry Matt Côté, and Owen Bailey ’22. ��(Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In September, Wenzel and the Weissmans, who were on campus bringing their son back to �ֲ���ý for his sophomore year, hand-delivered a $100,000 check to fund the endowment and gathered with chemistry students to celebrate the fund’s establishment.

“If I could only highlight one thing about my whole career, it would be engaging undergraduates in meaningful research,” Wenzel says.

“That a former student of mine gave money to the college to provide summer support for future undergraduates — forever — I truly don’t think there could be any more meaningful honor to me than that.”

Thomas Wenzel and Jim Weissman ’84 reconnect in a laboratory in Dana Chemistry Hall in September. Weissman, a chemistry major who was mentored by Wenzel and is now chief operating officer at Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, established with his wife an endowed fund in Wenzel’s name. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Biochemistry major Jessica Howard ’12 was also a three-year letterwinner on the women’s swim team who was inducted into the �ֲ���ý Scholar-Athlete Society as a senior. Photograph by Rene Minnis.

The journal Chemistry and Engineering News says Jessica Howard ’12 is a prime example of how science majors can use research internships to leverage job prospects.

A chemistry major, Howard is now a research scientist working on a drug discovery project at Albany Molecular Research Inc. in Indianapolis. She had considered graduate school, but “loves the hands-on” aspect of work in the private sector.

Her internship, the summer before senior year, was at Cubist Pharmaceuticals (whose CEO is Mike Bonney ’80, chair of the �ֲ���ý College Board of Trustees).

“I loved my experience there — the people, the work environment, and seeing the impact of my work by producing drug candidates,” .

Howard also gained lab experience at �ֲ���ý, including a yearlong thesis in analytical chemistry under Dana Professor of Chemistry Tom Wenzel. “Being able to form a relationship with a professor who knew me both in the lab and as a student, that gave me a leg up in my [job] interviews,” Howard says.

She also did a CDIP job shadow through the �ֲ���ý Career Development Center with the drug-discovery company , where she was hosted by Steven Kates ’83, vice president of research.

(In fact, the National Science Foundation says that 72 percent of chemistry majors have had some research experience upon graduation, suggesting that graduate schools and employers now expect science grads to have such research experience.)

The private-sector experience at Cubist and Ischemix, coupled with her �ֲ���ý education, made her a more attractive job candidate, she explains.

“I could start working right off the bat, rather than being trained.”

�ֲ���ý 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 �ֲ���ý 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 �ֲ���ý 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 �ֲ���ý, 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 �ֲ���ý, 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 �ֲ���ý 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 �ֲ���ý 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 �ֲ���ý, has received a grant worth nearly $100,000 to support a curriculum development project in analytical chemistry.

The 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 of the University of California, Riverside, Wenzel is developing an entire online undergraduate curriculum in analytical chemistry that will be disseminated via the .

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.”

By Catherine Green ’10

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

The 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 of the University of California, Riverside, Wenzel is developing an entire online undergraduate curriculum in analytical chemistry that will be disseminated via the .

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.”

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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 �ֲ���ý.

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 �ֲ���ý, 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 �ֲ���ý 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.

The award recognizes outstanding undergraduate research in analytical chemistry. Smith, a senior from Plattsburgh, N.Y., has participated in Dana Professor of Chemistry Thomas Wenzel’s research into molecular chirality, or “handedness” — a phenomenon in which some molecules of a given compound are mirror images of the remaining molecules, with potentially critical reactive differences. For instance, “right-handed” molecules of the compound might have beneficial medical properties, where their “left-handed” equivalents would be toxic.

Smith is researching the use of amino acids to impart specific chirality. The Kolthoff award is the second she has received for this work. Last spring, a $5,000 fellowship from the pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer Inc. enabled her to continue her research at �ֲ���ý through summer 2001.

The American Chemical Society’s Division of Analytical Chemistry presents the Kolthoff award to encourage talented undergraduates to pursue further studies in analytical chemistry. The $500 award supports recipients’ travel to the society’s national meeting to present their research. This is the second time a student of Wenzel’s has won the award. The first winner was Jolene Thurston ’00, of Post Mills, Vt., who received the Kolthoff in 1999.

Smith and this year’s other Kolthoff recipients will travel in April to the society’s annual gathering in Orlando, Fla.

A professor of analytical chemistry at the University of Minnesota, the late I.M. Kolthoff was a 20th-century leader of the profession, author of numerous influential textbooks and a major researcher in electroanalytical chemistry.