Hi, my name is Dee Oyler. I am chair of the department of Chemistry at UVSC. I have been at UVSC for eighteen years and I have seen a lot of changes during that period of time. We have an excellent faculty. Every member of the faculty has a PhD. We have a laboratory instructor and two laboratory managers that keep our laboratories running and in good shape. It is our goal to get research experience for every one of our majors, either here or through an internship. All classes are taught by regular faculty members, there will be no teaching assistants. Instruction will be directly from people with PhD´s. The Chemistry Department offers two degrees. We have a degree in Chemistry that meets all the requirements for the American Chemical Society certification. We also offer a degree in Chemistry and Physics education. We have an exciting new program that will be offering next year and that is will have an emphasis in Forensic Chemistry. Job opportunities are wide open. Some things that Chemists do; they can work in laboratories doing research and development, they can do quality for products, they can help solve environmental problems. We offer classes in Environmental Chemistry, if that is of interest. Our Chemistry and Physics Education degree would open all types of opportunities. Every person we have in this program has been offered a job before they have completed the program. You can just about name the place you would like to teach. You would be able to teach both Chemistry and Physics and certify in the two areas. Forensic Chemistry, where we have the emphasis is going to be another important area. You can help in solving crimes and you will learn how to do a lot of analysis based on Forensic Chemistry. Many people are interested in this degree and we are looking forward to offering it.

To get our Forensics program going, we are going to need certain types of equipment. Some space has been designated for this type of program but we are still looking for all types of equipment. We would like to get a Mass Spectrometer; we need some more Gas Chromatographs. We also need some small equipment. So any type of equipment, from small to large, would really help the program to grow rapidly.

The entire faculty in the department is interested in doing research. Right now we are limited because of space and we don´t have enough dedicated space for research. The Science Building is undergoing a remodeling program, which will help. Every faculty member wants to do research and develop more programs for this area. We have people who are interested in Environmental research both with water chemistry and Atmospheric Chemistry. We have people who are interested in X-Ray work. We have people in Organic Chemistry who are looking at natural products. Bio Chemistry is a very popular area. We have a number of metabolism programs that people are working on in this are. You could probable find a faculty member willing to help you with any type of research you would be interested in.

One nice thing about the research here is that it is geared to the undergraduate level. We have no graduate program so this means that junior and senior levels students can be highly involved in research and probably have publications by the time they graduate. This would lead you to graduate work in Chemistry if you are interested. There are many job opportunities; Government labs, Environmental labs, research labs, quality control, work in pharmaceutical companies. The range is wide open for people with degrees in Chemistry.

We have one of our graduates is in Dental school at Ohio State University. Another of our graduated is planning on going into a Chemical Engineering degree at the University of Utah. One of our graduates this year who received a 94% grade on the Graduate Record exam is looking at attending universities that are top notch.

So, we have a program that can prepare you to get into a good graduate school and this opens up a great number of opportunities for people. We also have some students, right now, that are participating in some research at Brigham Young University because our space is limited. There are research opportunities available. If you don´t like what we offer here, we have ties with Brigham Young University. They will give you opportunities to do research there and obtain credit at UVSC.