Scott Hartsel. Dr Hartsel (who will turn 50 this year) is still Department Chair and as such is still taking out his stress on hapless audiences everywhere.  Recently  he has been Crazy Old Maurice in Beauty and Beast and Evil Priest #1 in Jesus Christ Superstar with Kurt Wiegel of course Evil Priest #2(see review here http://www.cvtg.org/index.cgi?history/2006_04_superstar.html)….This spring he and daughters Nina and Rozzy were in the classic musical Fiddler on the Roof on the stage of the State Theater. Nina got to be Chava and she was excited…it’s her first romantic lead in a musical and Chava gets all the tears. Scott was Mordcha the innkeeper and Rozzy was a village person (Y M C A ?).  My college-age daughter Monika’s consolation for missing the fun was to travel to a mountaintop retreat in the Cascades to learn religion and  fight bears , North Carolina to learn house construction and later this year to learn Swahili in Tanzania! He took three students to Salt Lake City last year and four students to Washington DC this year to present their research. He is beginning to feel like a tour guide. He does not plan on doing anything wild for the 50th, but was convinced by students to put up his own Facebook page…you can be my Friend just by asking…

Marc McEllistrem. I t was another not-so-quiet year at the McEllistrem household.  In the spring I was still on sabbatical, spending part of my time at the U of MN (where I had the chance to meet with several UW-EC grads) and part of my time at UW-EC.  My research at UW-EC went remarkably well, as I have started a biochemistry collaboration with Alan DiSpirito at Iowa State and the Hartsel group; some of our work was recently published in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry.  In the summer, we had a second NSF site visit for a multi-institutional grant, and we were declined for a second time - all I can say is that the NSF screwed up, again.  In contrast, the multi-institutional grant with Chippewa Valley Technical College was funded.  In between times, I worked on cleaning out a vacuum chamber to be used in GaN film growth.  In the fall, I taught Quant again (actually, its “Quant Lite” - now with less credits! - we reduced the number of credits in Quant from 5 to 4), and have been working with physics faculty in the development of a possible new major in materials science.
Our household also continues to grow as my wife delivered a son (Sean) on June 20th.  Sean is our fourth child (for those of you counting, that would be ages 6, 4, 3, and 7 months as of March).  Our fatigue level has increased substantially but the kids can always find someone to play with.

Jim Phillips.  Dr. Jim is busy this spring teaching both CHEM 304 (Environmental Chem.) and CHEM 434 (P-Chem. II – sans lab). This comes on the heels of the “first run” of CHEM 127 (Chemistry and Climate) during winterim and a successful run at CHEM 115 last Fall. Research continues to go well also. Two back-to-back, Phillips Group papers just appeared in J. Phys. Chem. B, and PRF just agreed to fund a project over the next three years.

As far as Jim’s personal life goes, things are even more busy. Katy was hard-at-work running a successful State Assembly campaign last fall. Maggie and Ellie are now 4th graders! Jim still plays in a country-rock-blues band (Point B), and also in a new (yet nameless) spin-off project. With this, the and time Jim donates organizing the local Earth Day Festival and coaching soccer, it has been hard to find the time to hunt and fish, but I still do get out from time to time. As such, I tend to cure my claustrophobia by frequently walking Nina, our families’ very spoiled, high-maintenance basset hound. 

Steve Drucker. This is my ninth year on the faculty, and it is busy as usual. I made a relatively smooth transition from sabbatical last year, back to
membership in the working class! This year I taught the first semester
of physical chemistry. In the spring semester I am team teaching our new
physical analysis lab (Chem 438) with Marc McEllistrem. It promises to
be filled with plenty of excitement and perturbation! Two highlights for
this course: 1. we have commissioned with OLIS (online instrument
service) to bring our Sputnik-era Cary 14 back to life (now for the
second time) and equip it with a modern computer interface; 2. we are
planning an new experiment to record vibrationally resolved
laser-induced emission spectra. The combination of these two
experimental approaches will allow the Chem 438 students to obtain a
detailed map of potential-energy surfaces for both ground and electronic
excited states of molecules such as I2.

In the world of research, my students (Laura Hoffelt, Mitch Springer,
and Alex Otte) and I are moving forward with a number of new
initiatives, including jet-cooled phosphorescence excitation
spectrosocpy of triplet excited states. This new work was inspired by a
nice sabbatical collaboration I had with Prof. Tim Zwier at Purdue.
Notably, my "boss" at Purdue was Nathan Pillsbury, a 2003 UW-EC
graduate, former member of my group, and current grad student at Purdue.

On the domestic front, I am proud to see my son Ben (age 6.5) become
interested and proficient in both violin and tennis. My wife Diane (age
... hey none of your business!) surely inspired Ben's interest in these
activities. Most importantly, we are waiting with excitement (and a bit
of fear!) for the arrival of our new offspring in May 2007!!

Kurt Wiegel. Ah 2006, it was the best of times…and it was pretty good overall. We were mildly productive research wise, with difficult reactions throwing every roadblock possible In our way. PRF has decided to fund us for three years to look into hydrogen bond duplexes for mesogen formation, and a RSEC grant from Minnesota helped us work on polymer/clay/liquid crystalline nanocomposites. Justin Kumpfer and David Witte worked hard all summer and (hopefully) had a good time as well. Justin left us for the greener pastures of Cleveland (?!) and Case Western Reserve University, and the Fall semester saw the return of Clint cook, Paul Yanzer and Kurt Zimmerman. Two of our papers saw the light of day in 2006 and I taught the last CHEM 323 course that UWEC will offer. We closed out the year bidding farewell to the class and looking forward to the flagship CHEM 326 in the spring.

Chris Rohde. I continue to help out in the Chemistry department in an "As Needed" capacity.  Last year it was with Chem 104 labs, and this year it has been with lecture and lab sections of Chem 103.  Last summer I even played the role of "organic chemist", and served as lab supervisor for the last lab section before the revision of the Organic chemistry curriculum.  I remain impressed with the high-quality students we have here at UWEC, and appreciate the opportunity to work with such a talented and dedicated staff.    

James Boulter . The past year went by exceedingly fast.  I’ve moved on from a stint of teaching Quant back to Gen Chem (now 103).  It’s extraordinary to observe how much students change after completing their first year of classes…  Research progresses, but never as fast as I would like.  My “dream” vacuum chamber is now more-or-less fully functional, and my group and I are now routinely acquiring data.  This was made possible through two grants I received last year: Research Corp and NASA.  There are still a few peripheral instruments on my shopping list, but it’s rewarding to finally be “doing” science beyond the building phase.  So far, we are concentrating on growing water ice films at temperatures between 30 and 150 K, and depositing simple organic molecules on top to indirectly elucidate the morphology (i.e. surface area via adsorption interactions).  The next step is to add ammonia ice films to our repertoire, exposing these to various organics to mimic behavior of ice particles in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere.  On another front, I’ve acquired a meteorological system which will be installed on Phillips roof soon – watch for UWEC weather forecasts on the website one of these days!  Some previous work was finally published: 4 papers from postdoctoral (and even some Ph.D.) work during 2005 and 2006!  Meanwhile, my wife, Christine and I have continued to settle into upper-Midwest life; we’ve been to Chicago a couple of times and I took my first kayaking expedition through the Apostles with some friends from undergrad.  Life in the booming metropolis of Strum, WI has been good; we have enjoyed the quiet of living in the parsonage on Crystal Lake and the people down there have been great.  Since last year, I’ve taken on a new musical endeavor: church choir director.  This has been a bit of a stretch (I’m a trained musician, but mostly as a trumpet player) but I’m just enough of a type “A” personality to really enjoy standing in front of a group, shaping the music.

Mike Carney. A 100 page review for Comprehensive Organometallic Chemistry III was finally published in November, 2006.  My contribution reviewed organometallic chromium compounds appearing in the literature between 1994 and 2003.  My chapter was completed in 2005, but it took an extra year for the publisher to compile all 189 chapters in the 12-volume set – which you can purchase from Elsevier for about $5400 – if you have an extra $5400 lying around.  However, if you really have an extra $5400 lying around, I guess I’d rather you donate it to UWEC.  On the research front, we continued our collaborative work with Chevron Phillips, resulting in a paper submitted (and accepted) to Organometallics and one submitted to Inorganic Chemistry.  A third article describing the industrial collaboration was published in the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) Quarterly.  Thanks to the wonderful efforts of my research students, the CPChem project has been successful enough to convince Chevron Phillips to consider a three-year agreement (up through 2009).  We’re keeping our fingers crossed!

 Al Denio with his wife Val visited Eau Claire during the summer.  He reports having a great trip.

Bob St. Louis visited Phillips Hall to hear a seminar presentation on few-electron systems, and other topics. He reports he is doing fine.

Joel Klink visited the Australia section of the International Folk Fair held in the Davies Center during the fall. He left with the Australian vocabulary enrichment handouts. Dave Lewis will quiz him on his next visit to the Department

Fred King spent 2006 working like crazy on Hilbert Transforms. He took a week off to attend the 2006 US Go Championships held at Black Mountain, NC. He managed to get a head cold the first evening, so the signs for the week did not look too promising. Reveille was played early in the morning over a loud speaker! Also, on the first two mornings, reveille was followed by the tune “Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning ….”. Fred was glad he was not playing in the midnight tournament! After a 0:2 start, Fred recovered to 3:3, which he said was somewhat of a relief. Fred’s 4 dan section was won by a nine-year-old, who a few months later was playing as a top 6 dan. Fred is now by a very small margin, the highest rated active American Go Association player in Wisconsin.

Fred reactivated his cycling this past summer, doing regular rides along the Chippewa.

Fred’s research continues on few-electron systems, and dealing with the recalcitrant integration problems that arise.

Jason Halfen. 2006 was a busy year for Jason Halfen and the Halfen research group. Our work received a substantial financial bolster with the receipt of three new awards: a renewal award from the National Science Foundation
($200,000), a new project award from Research Corporation ($36,000), and a multi-user instrumentation grant for an LC-MS ($137,000) for which I served as the principal investigator. I was also honored by receipt of the UWEC "Excellence in Scholarship" award during the University's fall convocation. My research group currently consists of three veteran students (Luke Slominski, Tony Hull, and Katie Klotz). These students will attend their first national ACS meeting this spring, and also just submitted their first publication. Away from the lab, my wife Heather and I recently welcomed our second child (Andrew) into the world; he joins an older sister Caroline (now 2 years +) and our golden retriever Samantha. Finally, in summer 2006, I took the plunge into the world of semi-professional walleye fishing, participating as a "pro" in several tournaments and establishing a guide service on some of our local waters. Feel free to drop me a line to talk chemistry, parenting, or walleyes!

Bob Eierman. In spring 2006, my family and I relocated to the midlands in England where I taught chemistry, education and math courses at Harlaxton College.  I was the first UWEC chemist to teach abroad and the first chemist ever to teach at Harlaxton.  We lived in Harlaxton Manor, a palatial structure built in the mid 1800’s.  I taught in the long gallery, a room filled with paintings, mirrored walls and a ceiling painted like a cloudy sky, a stark contrast to Phillips Hall.  The school week ran Monday to Thursday so we were able to do some weekend traveling around Great Britain, with highlights being visits to Lincoln, Edinburgh, Stonehenge, Bath and of course, London.  On the way home we spent 9 days touring Greece.  I’m now settled back into the routine at UWEC, teaching, designing and assessing new chemistry curriculum and playing a little basketball when committee meetings don’t interfere.  Having a tenure in Chemistry at UWEC second in length only to Fred King’s, I am striving to become more cantankerous and curmudgeonly, with limited success.

Sanchita Hati. The year 2006 was full of events for me. It was a happy and successful beginning of a new year for me when I bagged two jobs in the faculty position in January. I decided in favor of UWEC, as I was truly impressed by the spirit of this department and its members. I submitted a full paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in February and two grants (Dreyfus faculty Start-up Grant and Cottrell College Science Award Grant) in May. I went to India to see my family and friends in June. Finally, I wrapped up my postdoctoral work at the UMN and moved to Eau Claire at the end of July. I started my job in this department in the fall 2006. I taught CHEM 103 in the first semester and I greatly enjoyed the teaching. In the research front, last year was very productive for me. I had two publications from my postdoctoral work, one in Journal of Biological Chemistry and the other in Proceeding of National Academy of Science, USA. In addition, my research proposal was funded by the Research Corporation. Currently I have three undergraduate research students and we have started doing some cool biochemistry research that includes bioinformatics and protein engineering to study domain-domain communication in aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases. At home, my husband, Sudeep, and I are having wonderful time with our four-year-old daughter, Antara. We are enjoying the small-town life here and are looking forward to explore this place more in the summer.

Alan Gengenbach. The last year has been a fairly busy one for me. I really
enjoyed teaching and tweaking our redesigned first semester general
chemistry course. Relearning advanced inorganic chemistry so I can
effectively teach 401 is currently occupying much of my time. In the
fall, three students (Frank Emmert, Brian Hon and James Thomas) and I
attended the National ACS meeting. We reached a milestone for my lab in
mid-January: submission of my first manuscript from UWEC. Outside of
Phillips Hall, Jim and I continued to coach Maggie and Ellie Phillips'
soccer team during the summer and I think we won a few games this past
year.  Although I finished 3rd in a poker tournament last fall and
pocketed about $700, poker is starting to get a little boring.
Therefore, I dug out my whitewater kayak and went paddling a couple
times. I hope to learn how to roll the kayak (self-rescue) this winter
so I can safely navigate rapids next summer without fearing for my life.