St. Mary’s College of Maryland Interim Dean of Faculty Katie Gantz has named three new faculty members for distinguished professorships.
The 2022-2024 Aldom-Plansoen College Fellows are Daniel Chase, PhD and Barrett Emerick, PhD
The Aldom-Plansoen Honors College Fellowships are granted to associate professors for a two-year term. In honor of recent professional accomplishments and promising developing research, outstanding mid-career faculty are rewarded with funds to sustain and enrich their scholarly contributions. The fellowship award is generously supported by the Aldom-Plansoen Endowment established in 1999 by Jarrod Aldom ’97 and John Plansoen.
Daniel Chase, associate professor of chemistry, has his doctorate in chemistry from the University of Oregon. His research focuses on synthetic organic chemistry and organometallic chemistry. Chase published two peer-reviewed articles with student co-authors in 2020, and two more in 2019; he also co-authored a book chapter on Chemistry pedagogical practice. In recent years, his research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Petroleum Research Fund, the Office of Naval Research, and the Patuxent Partnership Project.
Barrett Emerick, associate professor of philosophy, holds his doctorate from the University of Colorado Boulder. Emerick’s research considers intersections of social and feminist philosophy, moral psychology, and normative ethics. He is the co-editor of the 2021 issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (in which he contributes the article, “The Limits of the Rights to Free Thought and Expression”) and the 2019 issue of Feminist Philosophy Quarterly. Emerick has published five journal articles, four book chapters, and has delivered many refereed presentations. He has coauthored a forthcoming book on moral responsibility within unjust circumstances called Not Giving Up on People: Anticarceral Feminism, Moral Repair, and Criminal Justice. Finally, he has developed and taught eleven different courses and has mentored 35 St. Mary’s Projects, a reflection of his investment in the teacher-scholar model.
The 2022-2025 Steven Muller Distinguished Professor of the Sciences is Geoffrey Bowers, PhD.
The Steven Muller Distinguished Professorship of Sciences was created in 2000 by the late Steven Muller, donor and former Chair of the College’s Board of Trustees. The Distinguished Professorship of the Sciences honors a faculty member whose accomplishments are recognized as distinguished by peers in the field, and whose scholarly work informs opportunities for SMCM students. The professorship is granted for a three-year term. The College is ever-grateful to Steven Muller for creating the fund that continues to support these awards.
Geoffrey Bowers, associate professor of chemistry, holds his doctorate in chemistry from Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on using solid-state NMR and other spectroscopic, thermal analysis, diffraction, and microscopic methods to study the physics and chemistry of solid-fluid interfaces, and is known in his field for foundational work both on clay-water interfaces and the interactions of supercritical carbon dioxide and methane with shale minerals. HIs research efforts have developed strong collaborations between the College and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, leading to 3 students participating in US Department of Energy summer internships since 2017. Bowers has published 21 peer-reviewed papers since joining St. Mary’s College of Maryland in 2016, 8 of those first author publications, and a book chapter. His research has been funded by grants from the US Department of Energy, the US Department of Energy's Environmental and Molecular Sciences Laboratory, as well as the NSF Council on Undergraduate Research. In keeping with the Muller Professorship’s focus on recognizing faculty whose research opens doors for our students, Bowers has mentored 11 St. Mary’s Project students and eight other undergraduate researchers for the equivalent of 62 student research semesters to date. Eight of those 11 SMP students have gone on to pursue graduate degrees in chemistry, engineering, biomedical sciences, and education.