FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bates Professor Elected To Office

LEWISTON, Maine -- Thomas J. Wenzel, professor and chair of the department of chemistry at Bates College, was recently elected as president-elect of the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR).

A Bates faculty member since 1981, Wenzel received his B.S. degree in chemistry from Northeastern University and a Ph.D in analytical chemistry from the University of Colorado, Boulder. From 1989-92, he served as chair of the division of science and mathematics at Bates; in 1988-89 he was a visiting associate professor of chemistry at Duke University.

Wenzel has received research and educational grants from the National Science Foundation, Research Corporation, the Petroleum Research Fund, the Pittsburgh Conference and Expostion and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. His research interests are in the areas of chiral NMR shift reagents, selective sorbents for gas chromatography and lanthanide luminescence detection in liquid chromatography.

The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) seeks to strengthen science and science education at primarily undergraduate colleges and universities. It focuses its efforts on promoting effective and stimulating education for future scientists and on sharing with the public, through its members, new knowledge.

Wenzel has served as a CUR councilor since 1990, edited the Fifth Edition of "Research in Chemistry at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions" and was conference co-chair for the Fifth National Conference of CUR and First National Conference of CUR Kids held at Bates College in June of 1994.

A resident of Auburn, Wenzel co-chaired the Auburn Comprehensive Plan Committee, a group comprised of 37 individuals, which reviewed the city's operations from a zoning and land-use standpoint in order to establish public policy in Auburn for the next decade.

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