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A window on the future
Alumni who love chemistry and Pittcon give students the chance to experience it, too.
Bethel alumni love to help students think about what they can do with their majors – witness the numbers who come to campus each November for Career Night.
Janet (Klaassen) ’63 and Orvin Voth ’64 of Newton have taken that literally miles further. They have set up a fund that pays for students to go, every other year, to “the world’s annual premier conference and exposition on laboratory science.”
Better known as Pittcon, this annual conference rotates among Atlanta, Chicago, New Orleans, Orlando and Philadelphia. The name comes from the fact that it originated in Pittsburgh – moving only after it got too large – and is organized by the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy, a nonprofit educational corporation comprised of the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh and the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh.
Both Janet and Orvin were chemistry majors at Bethel. Orvin taught at Bethel for two years, 1966-68, and later he and Janet team-taught analytical chemistry one year. In 1968, he was offered a job at NCRA, an oil refinery in McPherson, where he stayed until 2007.
As educators (Janet taught high school chemistry, other sciences and mathematics at Halstead and Hillsboro, in addition to working as a chemist for 14 years at CertainTeed as well as Abbott Labs, now Hospira, both in McPherson, among other jobs), the Voths wondered how best to help students make the jump from chemistry major to chemistry career.
“We had a real concern about the gap between academia and industrial activity,” Janet says. “We were looking for ways to bridge that. Industry summer internships [for Bethel students or faculty] weren’t materializing.”
Janet first attended Pittcon – though Orvin had already been several times – in 1987 while she was in an interval between a layoff and rehire by the same company. They both enjoyed Pittcon so much, they began asking: “How can we get Bethel students to go?”
They talked with Tom Lehman, then head of Bethel’s chemistry department. “It was almost like we had a conversation with him walking out to the car after church,” Janet remembers. “We had to sell him on the idea, but he wasn’t a hard sell.”
Lehman and the Voths drove a van and a car with students to Atlanta for Pittcon in March 1989. Lehman wrote in his 1988-89 annual faculty report that Pittcon “was easily the most exciting event of the year in terms of chemical education.”
Every second year since then, the Voths have paid transportation and lodging costs for any student who wants to attend Pittcon. Students pay the registration fee – which is still $25 – and the cost of their meals, although the Voths always take the students (usually in the company of friends, often other Bethel alumni, also at Pittcon) out for dinner one evening.
In addition, every Bethel Pittcon experience except 1989 has been worth an hour of credit for the students. They are required to figure out how to make up workin other classes, since the conference lasts a week, and they complete assignments that differ according to the professor in charge.
In 2011, reports Carrie Schulz, senior biology and chemistry major from Newton, Professor of Chemistry Gary Histand’s assignment was for each student to meet at least four new people, to attend at least two lectures and to explore infrared spectrometers and the companies who offered them, in order to make recommendations for the chemistry department’s upcoming purchase of a new one.
From the beginning, Pittcon has done what the Voths hoped for in terms of helping students figure out what to do with chemistry.
Tina Huang ’90, Easton, Pa., was a senior chemistry major when she joined the first group from Bethel to attend Pittcon.
“I had just taken analytical chemistry,” she remembers. “Tom Lehman was the professor, and he told us: ‘A couple of alumni are interested in taking students on a field trip.’ I had never been to a conference before.”
Even after an internship at Vulcan Chemicals in Wichita, she says, she was not sure what she wanted to do with her chemistry major. “Pittcon gave me ideas. Talking with people there gave me an idea what people do with analytical chemistry degrees in terms of research and jobs. It was a window I hadn’t looked through before and helped give me some direction.”
Tina eventually completed a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry at the University of Kansas. She did post-doctoral work in the Washington, D.C., area, stayed for a couple of years working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and eventually got a job teaching at Lafayette College in Easton, where she has now been for eight years.
And she takes her own students to Pittcon – mostly research students, who make presentations during the week. “I want them to experience the same things Janet and Orvin did for me,” Tina says, “to hear people talk about what’s new and see them work with the instruments. It’s a type of experience they wouldn’t get any other way.”
The Voths usually meet other Bethel alumni who attend Pittcon (often with students as well), especially Norman Schmidt ’84, Brooklet, Ga., who teaches chemistry at Georgia Southern University, and Werner Boschmann ’74, who lives and works in Germany.
This November, Janet and Tina will be presenting at the Eastern Analytical Symposium in an invited session titled “Educating Analytical Chemists in the 21st Century: Alternative Teaching Methods and Advanced Technologies,” in which they will talk about using Pittcon as part of an undergraduate chemistry curriculum.
“There are no criteria for who can go to Pittcon,” Janet says, “except interest in science. It isn’t just for science majors. [Pittcon shows that] so many things are possible – someone had to design the booth, build the booth, plan the conference, do the logistics.”
Carrie Schulz attended for the second time in 2011, having gone as a freshman in 2009 to Pittcon in Chicago. Other students attending this year were seniors Trent Baalman, Wichita, John Goering, Valley Center, and Trey Ronnebaum, Wichita, and juniors Chris Riesen, Beatrice, Neb., Aaron Rudeen, Osage City, and Ben Suchsland, Agra.
“It sounded like fun,” Schulz says of her first trip. “I hadn’t been to a conference of that type before. I wanted to see how things work in the real world of chemistry.
“Going the second time – I wasn’t able to absorb as much as a freshman, and this time I knew I’d be able to take in more and I would know more about what I was doing and seeing.”
She has a hard time deciding what she likes best about Pittcon. “There’s so much of what you’re interested in in one place. It’s great to see the new stuff and also really exciting to see things you know about. Talking to people there, you find out how they got their current positions, which gives you an idea what you might do.
“The lectures are fascinating,” she adds. “My favorite was on forensic chemistry, like what they do to analyze broken glass and match it to vehicles. You wouldn’t think glass had different components, but it does.”
“I like bringing people together who don’t know each other but who I think will have interests in common,” Janet says. “For many years, we would host students for a spaghetti dinner at our home once a month. Then I was gone several years for a job in North Carolina, and after that, the students didn’t know who ‘the spaghetti lady’ was.
“One thing that makes the Pittcon course successful is the relationships,” she adds, “someone who goes along each year. I hope someone else will take on that personal involvement when Orvin and I are no longer able.”