Comprehensive redesign and implementation of an organic chemistry curriculum is a complex and multi-faceted undertaking. All revisions must sustain academic rigor and support continuing modifications. Unfortunately, external metrics designed to measure the success of comprehensive curriculum changes are uncommon or only marginally helpful. Our unique metrics developed in conjunction with curriculum redesign will be discussed.

Stacking interactions, which are roughly parallel face-to-face interactions between planar π-systems, play important roles in chemical and biochemical systems. Our ability to predict and rationally tune the strength of these interactions is important in everything from the design of new organic materials and catalysts to structure-based drug design. I will discuss our decade-long effort to develop quantitative and qualitative models of stacking interactions, with a particular focus on those interactions occurring in drug binding sites.

A grant of nearly $1 million from the National Science Foundation, with additional funding provided by UGA's Office of Research and the Georgia Research Alliance, will bring a new electron microscope—the only one of its kind in Georgia—to the UGA campus.

Polarized Optical Microscopy (POM) is a technique used to quantitatively and qualitatively characterize birefringent samples. Image contrast arises from the optically anisotropic samples interacting with plane polarized light to produce two individual, perpendicular wave components. POM is commonly used to study crystalline morphology in plastics and composites, as well as to visualize fundamental polymer orientations and crystallization phenomena.

Electrospray ionization and ion-trapping methods of mass spectrometry have significantly improved our ability to study gas-phase ion chemistry, and to determine the intrinsic structure and reactivity of metal ions and metal ion complexes. Ion traps with multi-dimensional (MSn) tandem mass spectrometry capabilities are versatile gas-phase "laboratories" within which ions can be manipulated and studied. Ion traps can also function as “sample cuvettes" for structure determination using wavelength-selective infrared photodissociation.

Weak magnetic fields (< 30 mT) can have a profound influence on radical pair reactions. This is, at first sight, puzzling since the magnetic interactions are typically much smaller than the thermal energy at room temperature. The radical pair is created in a highly non-equilibrium state, however, displaying significant mixing between its singlet and triplet spin states. The mixing rate is altered if a magnetic field is present via the Zeeman interaction.