The Chemistry Department, housed on the third floor of the A.G. Bush Science Center on the Rollins campus is a modern, air-conditioned, well-equipped and maintained facility consisting of faculty offices, classrooms, and research, instrument and teaching laboratories. The heart of this facility is four large multi-purpose instructional laboratories with a central chemical stockroom. Laboratories are equipped with safety equipment, wall and canopy hoods over laboratory benches and instructional instruments. Students are assigned their own laboratory lockers containing basic glassware and equipment used in laboratory course work. Appended to these instructional laboratories are four smaller laboratories housing research spectrometers, electrochemical instrumentation, a computer lab and a well-equipped darkroom. The perimeter of the facility is lined with faculty offices with adjoining faculty research laboratories, three two/three student research laboratories, a classroom, a seminar style classroom, a student lounge/study room and separate laboratories for molecular modeling and computation, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, mass spectroscopy and electrochemistry (see our instrumentation).

The centrally located Chemical Stockroom houses a computerized inventory of over 4000 compounds, instructional and research glassware, laboratory apparatus and small equipment and solvent storage cabinets. A controlled access storage facilities for large volume chemical storage is located on the first floor of the Science Center, and one for isotope storage is located in the basement. Students and faculty have access to a very well equipped machine shop and glass-blowing facility located on the first floor.

Laboratories

• The John R. and Ruth W. Gurtler Chemistry Classroom receives heavy use throughout the academic year. For the fall 2005 semester, the room is booked 8 a.m.-2 p.m. every Monday/Wednesday/Friday, and 9 a.m.-11 a.m. every Tuesday/Thursday, for chemistry courses taught by virtually the entire chemistry faculty. The state-of-the-art “smart” teaching/learning technologies incorporated in the room help professors keep lecture material alive for students and draw students into more interactive discussion that seeds ideas for research in lab courses and the SFCR program.
• The Gurtler Biochem Lab enabled Rollins to establish a biochemistry/molecular biology major. The College currently has 36 students declared in the major, and increasing numbers of students are declaring it each year. Many cite the availability of a top quality lab facility, and the opportunity to use it for class work and undergraduate research, as a determining factor in their choice of the major. The lab features basic biochemistry equipment and instrumentation – a centrifuge, incubation and low-temperature refrigeration equipment, and electrophoresis instruments – that support instruction as well as faculty and SFCR projects.
• The Gurtler NMR Lab was brought online in 2004 with the purchase and installation of a new, state-of-the-art NMR spectrometer, thanks to the Gurtler Foundation’s December 2003 gift. Dr. Erich Blossey, D. J. and J. M. Cram Professor of Chemistry, has completed most of the training on the new NMR, began working with organic chemistry students on the equipment in spring 2005, and is continuing to work with them on it this year. Using the new NMR, students are able to acquire the “hands-on” experience of analyzing spectra that they themselves have generated. Prior to this, students could work only with spectra generated for them by their instructors.

 Rollins College
Department of Chemistry
1000 Holt Avenue, Box 2743
Winter Park, Florida 32789-4499
(407) 646-2223

If you have questions or problems with this webpage, please contact Darren Stoub

September 15, 2005