Alumni Association Home > Distinguished Teaching Awards > Past Distinguished Teaching Award Recipients	Print View

It was clear from the start that Mark Distefano was a great teacher. In his first year teaching organic chemistry, a course required for several majors, his student evaluations were through the roof.

"Difficult subject matter was made accessible by his concrete examples and direct links to his own research," says one student. "This transformed organic chemistry from a potentially boring subject to one filled with excitement and fascination."

A course Distefano developed, Introduction to Chemical Biology, has also earned raves for teaching students the interrelationships between chemistry and biology and also the crucial skill of extracting what they need to know from scientific literature. In his freshman seminar, How do Chemists Study Biology?, he shows how science relates to such topics as venture capital, patent law, and bioethics.

In 2001, Distefano devoted time and energy to support a graduate student who designed a new "green" experiment for organic chemistry students—a rare initiative for a professor. Twelve undergraduates have been coauthors on publications with Distefano, and fifteen have presented their work at national meetings of the American Chemical Society.

Distefano has welcomed 47 students from a variety of majors to taste the joys of research in his laboratory. It is vital, he says, to educate a broad base of people about how science works if the nation’s high level of scientific research is to be maintained.