Campus and Facilities at Wesleyan

Wesleyan University

For more than 150 years Wesleyan University has been identified with the highest aspirations and achievements of private liberal arts higher education. Wesleyan's commitment to the sciences dates from the founding of the University, when natural sciences and modern languages were placed on an equal footing with traditional classical studies. In order to maintain and strengthen this commitment, graduate programs leading to the Ph.D. degree in the sciences were established in the late 1960's. The program in chemistry was designed to be small, distinctive, and personal, emphasizing research, acquisition of a broad knowledge of advanced chemistry and creative thinking.

The Location of the Chemistry Department

Middletownn is a small city on the west bank of the Connecticut River, 15 miles south of Hartford, the state capital. New Haven is 24 miles to the southwest; New York City and Boston are two hours away by automobile. Middletown's population of 50,000 is spread over an area of 43 square miles, much of which is rural. Although Wesleyan is the primary source of cultural activity in Middletown, the city is not a "college town" but serves as a busy commercial center for the region between Hartford and the coast. Water sports, skiing, hiking, and other outdoor activities can be enjoyed in the hills, lakes, and river nearby. The Chemistry department is located in the Hall-Atwater Laboratory situated between Church St. and Lawn Avenue. 

Chemistry Department Facilities

The Chemistry Department is housed in an air-conditioned building, sharing space with the Departments of Biology and Molecular Biology & Biochemistry. Major items of equipment include the following: Hewlett-Packard GC (5890) mass spectrometer; Perkin-Elmer M1600 FTIR; Spectrum BX FTFR; Fluoromax-2 spectrofluorimeter; stop-flow reactions kinetics system; picosecond CW mode locked Nd:YAG laser with cavity-dumped dye laser; JASCO J810 spectropolarimeter equipped with a Peltier temperature controller, a Beckman DU650 spectrophotometer equipped with a Peltier temperature controller; Johnson-Matthey magnetic susceptibility balance; a variety of gas and liquid chromatographs; Perkin-Elmer LS-50 spectrofluorimeter; Hitachi F2000 spectrofluorimeter; three Hitachi U-2900 UV/VIS; three HP diode array UV/VIS; ShimadZ4 UV 2401 PC UV-VIS Spectrophotometer; Perkin-Elmer 241 polarimeter; Hewlett-Packard 5973 GC mass spectrometer; Photon Technologies LS-100 luminescence lifetime apparatus; Jobin Yvon 1500 high resolution optical spectrometer; two high-throughput molecular jet machines; pulsed-jet Fabry-Perot Fourier transform microwave spectrometer; Innovative Technology Glove box with Oxygen analyzer; VAC He493/M05 Glove box; Storm 840 Imagequant gel; blot analysis system and Wallac 1409DSA Liquid Scintillation Counter. The NMR facilities consist of a Varian Gemini two-channel, broadband Mercury Vx with gradients, a two channel Unity Plus 400 with gradients and a three-channel Unity Inova 500 with gradients and a Bruker MQ20 Mini Spec NMR Relaxometer. The Chemistry Department depends heavily on computers. Among other systems, the department has a SUN IPX workstation, a SUN ultraspark workstation, IBM RISK6000 3CT workstation, Silicon Graphics Octane2 workstation, a Silicon Graphics Indigo 2 10000 workstation, and two IBM RD6000 workstation. Ethernet connects all department computers to the University computer and to the Internet.

Recent equipment acquisitions have been LC-Mass Spectrometer; Gel permeation Chromatograph; YAG Dye Laser, Scanning Electron Microscope; Transmission Electron Microscope; 128 Node Cluster & Facility; Micro plate Reader; Isothermal Titration Calorimeter; META Confocal Microscope System; and 600 MHz NMR.

Science Library

An outstanding advantage of Wesleyan is the Science Library. There is an excellent collection of periodical in all sciences housed together in one large library with excellent accommodations for study and research. There are subscriptions to more than 300 current periodicals and reviews in chemistry and biochemistry.

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