Dr. Gary P. Wulfsberg will give a presentation during our regular meditation time on Near Death Experience Tuesday, April 17, 2012 at 5:30pm. Discussion will follow! I hope you will make plans to attend this fascinating discussion!
Dr. Wulfsberg, professor in the Department of Chemistry, is an internationally known scholar in inorganic chemistry, organometallic chemistry, and chemical education. His distinguished academic career has focused on both bench research and research in chemical education. He received his B.S. in chemistry from Iowa State University and his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Dr. Wulfsberg has held postdoctoral appointments at the Cornell University Program on Science, Technology, and Society and at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt in West Germany. Before coming to MTSU in 1981, Dr. Wulfsberg taught at St. John’s University and at Northland College.
Dr. Wulfsberg’s bench research is in nuclear quadrupole resonance spectroscopy. He is especially known for his work on secondary bonding that includes studies of bonding of halocarbon ligands to metal ions; fluxional behavior in chlorinated cyclopentadienyl mercurials; and bonding of anions to metallocene catalysts that are used in industrial olefin polymerization. He is chair of the International Steering Committee for Nuclear Quadrupole Interactions and has served on the International Symposium Program Committee. He has made over 70 presentations to state, national, and international audiences. His collaborative research with scientists all over the world has resulted in numerous joint publications, and he has authored or coauthored articles in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the Journal of Organometallic Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Organometallics, Inorganica Chimica Acta, Organometallics, Berichte der Bunsengesellschaft fur Physikalische Chemie, Hyperfine Interactions, the Journal of Chemical Education, Zeitschrift für Naturforschung, and the Journal of Molecular Structure.
Widely acclaimed for his innovations in chemical education, Dr. Wulfsberg has written two textbooks in inorganic chemistry. His international reputation among inorganic chemists and chemical education specialists began with the 1987 publication of his book Principles of Descriptive Inorganic Chemistry. It became the leading textbook in the U.S. and was adopted by universities in Spain, Poland, Canada, Australia, Argentina, England, France, Taiwan, and Italy. This text included educationally innovative discovery (learning cycle) laboratory experiments designed to allow students to discover principles by themselves after doing appropriate experiments. Dr. Wulfsberg’s second text, Inorganic Chemistry, published in 2000 and written for senior-level advanced inorganic chemistry courses, has been adopted by 76 colleges and universities worldwide. As a result of the success of his texts, Dr. Wulfsberg has been a regularly invited presenter for many years to national meetings of the American Chemical Society as well as the Biennial Conferences on Chemical Education. He is a contributing author to the Encyclopedia of Inorganic Chemistry and a reviewer for numerous professional journals in his areas of expertise. Dr. Wulfsberg also served on the Scientific Board for the 1992 International Chemistry Olympiad.
At the institutional level, Dr. Wulfsberg’s commitment to student-centered learning is exemplary. He has supervised eight D.A. dissertations and nine M.S. theses in chemistry. An ardent supporter of undergraduate student research, he has also mentored 13 undergraduates, many of them Honors students. Several of his undergraduate and master’s students are now enrolled in or graduated from Ph.D. programs in the U.S. and Canada. Most of his students have published their research results in respected journals.
As a member of Honors College faculty, Dr. Wulfsberg developed a new set of discovery laboratory experiments for the Honors General Chemistry course, and the results of his students’ performance on the American Chemical Society Examinations Institute General Chemistry Exam were incorporated into the national standards for the exam. His Honors students have always performed above the national norm on the exam. For the last four years, Dr. Wulfsberg has been experimenting with student response systems as a learning cycle tool to broaden student-centered learning in large general chemistry courses. His work in this area was recently reported at the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education and will be submitted to the Journal of Chemical Education.
At the graduate level, Dr. Wulfsberg has served as graduate coordinator for the Chemistry Department, and he has been active in program reviews, revisions and development. He worked with his colleagues to institute a core curriculum into the M.S. in Chemistry and to convert the D.A. in Chemistry to a Ph.D. in Mathematics and Science Education. He serves as department coordinator for the M.S. in Chemistry for students who are recipients of NSF-STEM grants. Working with his colleagues, Dr. Wulfsberg built and maintained a Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance Laboratory, including a RITEC Fourier-Transform Pulse NQR Spectrometer with 2D capabilities.
Dr. Wulfsberg is a member of the American Chemical Society, Alpha Chi Sigma, and Phi Kappa Phi. He was honored by the Tennessee Academy of Sciences with the Distinguished University Scientist Award for Excellence in Science Teaching. Dr. Wulfsberg received the MTSU Outstanding Research Award in 1985 and 2002.
Dr. Gary Wulfsberg is a most worthy recipient of the MTSU 2010 Career Achievement Award.
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