Zeal + clarity = chemistry

Assistant Professor Maria Parr’s corner of the Clement Chemistry Building is seldom empty or still. Between the steady flow of students seeking her patient instruction and the growing momentum of her transition metals research, her office, lab, and classrooms are especially busy spots in the building.

Although she started teaching at Trinity just two years ago, the soft-spoken Parr, who graduated from the College in 1990, has built up quite a following. “Students flock to her office,” says Henry A. DePhillips Jr., the Vernon K. Krieble Professor of Chemistry.

“I think we are very, very fortunate to have her,” DePhillips says. Not only does she inspire students with her enthusiasm for chemistry and her accessible teaching style, but she also brings expertise in inorganic chemistry, a field of study that has blossomed in recent years and promises to remain on the leading edge.

Infectious enthusiasm
Parr’s quiet but deep-seated enthusiasm for chemistry is infectious, students find. “She essentially made me want to be a chemistry major,” says Julie Macphee ’03, who took “General Chemistry” with Parr last year and serves as one of Parr’s teaching assistants for the course this year. “I’m not the only one. Tons of my friends who are biology majors and other majors say, ‘Professor Parr makes me want to be a chem major.’”

Parr’s zeal for her subject matter sets the tone for her classes, labs, and meetings with students. But perhaps an even greater draw for students is her clarity. “She makes chemistry so unintimidating,” Macphee says, noting that Parr bolsters her well-prepared lectures with visual aids that help bring complicated subjects into focus for students.

Parr believes her teaching style is still evolving, but she says she strives to make chemistry accessible and relevant, especially for her students in the introductory chemistry course. She wants these students to understand the science and technology that is integral to today’s news and to take an interest in current research.

Research in catalysts
Parr’s area of expertise, inorganic chemistry, is a growing field. Parr conducts research on transition metals, compounds that can act as catalysts, causing reactions among other chemical compounds to yield new molecules. Such catalyst-created reactions often occur much more rapidly and with fewer unneeded byproducts than the uncatalyzed reaction. Parr’s Ph.D. and post-doctoral research, for instance, involved catalysts containing rhodium. These compounds are used widely in the formation of acetic acid from compounds that would otherwise not react together. Acetic acid is one of the most economically important manufactured compounds, Parr notes. As well as being the main flavor ingredient in vinegar, acetic acid is used in the manufacture of polyester and silicone rubber.  Subtle variations in the structure of the catalyst molecule can have a major, and unpredictable, effect on the catalyst’s ability to cause reactions and on the products it forms. The aim is to develop new catalysts for this and a host of other reactions that can help make the chemical industry more efficient.  The consequences are important, she explains. For example, a catalyst that can accelerate a reaction will reduce the amount of energy it requires, and a catalyst that makes a reaction more selective will reduce the amount of unwanted side-products formed.

Transition metals are a crucial component along the interface of chemistry and biology, and Parr is interested in focusing more of her research on this hot field of study. This summer Parr has received funding for a student researcher to assist in her lab. Eventually, she says, she hopes to have two or three student researchers.

Twice a newcomer
Chemistry has excited Parr since she was a teenager growing up in Miami Beach, FL. In high school, she says, “I was fascinated by all the elements in the periodic table and the neat things you could do with them.” Manipulating elements and watching their reactions has never stopped fascinating her.

Parr already knew she wanted to major in chemistry in 1986 when, as a first-year undergraduate student, she set foot on Trinity’s campus. After graduating in 1990, earning her Ph.D. at Yale University, and working overseas for BP Chemicals, she arrived anew on Trinity’s campus in 1999—this time as an assistant professor of chemistry.

“I always thought I would enjoy coming back to this sort of environment,” says Parr, who likes the challenge and fun of helping students as well as the honor of working as a colleague with her former professors.

Students feel a connection with Parr because she is an alumna, Macphee says. Parr remembers well the days when she was sitting in the students’ seats. In fact, she taught her first “General Chemistry” class at Trinity in the same classroom in which she had taken the course as an undergraduate. “It was a neat feeling,” she says of walking into the room for the first time as a professor.

Trinity then and now
Much has changed at Trinity in the 11 years since Parr graduated, including the prevalence of information technology, the construction of several new campus buildings, and the development of the Learning Corridor educational complex. These changes have enhanced the liberal arts education Trinity offers without compromising the aspects of the College that made Parr’s own undergraduate experience so rewarding. In particular, she notes, students still have the opportunity to take part in sophisticated research, to get hands-on experience with advanced instruments, and to work with some of the same professors who inspired her.

As a junior, Parr did research with DePhillips on a copper-based protein that carries oxygen in molluscs, just as iron carries oxygen in human blood. “She certainly was a very dedicated and able student. She was serious about her studies,” DePhillips recalls. And she succeeded in graduate school and in subsequent research work, he notes. “That’s always the proof of the pudding, how well our students do after they leave Trinity.” Parr also worked with Professor of Chemistry David E. Henderson on mass spectrometry research while she was an undergraduate.

“Trinity students are really fortunate to be able to work with state-of-the-art instrumentation,” Parr says. Undergraduates at other colleges have little, if any, opportunity to use such instruments as a mass spectrometer, a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer, or a scanning electron microscope with a dispersive x-ray detector. Dazzling instrumentation and exciting research aside, Parr says her professors themselves were the keys to her successful undergraduate career. In addition to DePhillips, Henderson, and others in the department, Scovill Professor of Chemistry Ralph O. Moyer has been a mentor for Parr both as an undergraduate and as a colleague.

Now that Parr has stepped to the other side of the lectern, she has an opportunity to pass on this valuable mentoring to the next generation of students. Judging from her colleagues’ and students’ assessments, she is well on her way.

—Becky Purdy