Volume 80, Number 32
CENEAR 80 32 p. 3
Building Chemistry's Foundation
Editor-in-chief
As I write this, the ACS
National Meeting in Boston is just days away. The last time I was in
Boston for an ACS national meeting was August 1998. What a year and what
a meeting! C&EN celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1998 with a wide
variety of activities. In Boston, the magazine hosted a public celebration
for meeting attendees as well as a chemical-industry-sponsored black-tie
event, where we feted giants of the chemical enterprise.
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| Lichter PHOTO BY MAIRIN BRENNAN | |
Another milestone also will be marked in Boston, although without fanfare. Boston will be the last ACS meeting that Robert Lichter will attend as executive director of the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation. Bob will continue to be active in ACS and in chemistry matters, but his last day at the foundation is Aug. 31.
Bob is a member of C&EN's Advisory Board, and I'm delighted that he will continue to bring his expertise to that board. But my admiration for him has nothing to do with his connection to C&EN. Like his many other fans, I marvel at how skillfully he has worked with the Dreyfus Foundation's outstanding board members to ensure its central place in the advancement of the chemical sciences.
Founded in 1946, the foundation is one of the few philanthropic organizations devoted solely to chemistry. When Bob arrived at the Dreyfus Foundation in March 1989, he found a few pieces of furniture in one room that had been sublet in a midtown Manhattan office building.
At that time, the foundation ran four programs: the Teacher-Scholar Awards Program, the New Faculty Awards Program, the New Grant Program in Chemistry for Liberal Arts Colleges, and the Special Grant Program in the Chemical Sciences. The last was primarily a small-instrument grant program. The foundation made about $1.9 million in grants on an asset base of about $50 million.
Since then, the staff has grown modestly, to three people, but the foundation's assets have grown to exceed $120 million, and grant expenditures have reached almost $6 million distributed among nine competitive and several discretionary programs.
Bob has helped guide the creation and reinvention of these programs. Space does not permit me to list them all, but C&EN's readers will recognize such programs as the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards Program and the Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards Program, which give separate emphasis to research with doctoral students and undergraduates, respectively.
The Special Grant Program in the Chemical Sciences was redirected to encourage innovative and, in many cases, risky endeavors to enhance the chemical sciences. The fruits of this program include new curricula, exploration of policy issues, the support of human resource development and diversity, and communication of chemistry to a broader public.
Another program places Ph.D. chemical scientists and engineers in leading environmental science research laboratories. With the demise of EPA's graduate fellowship program, the Dreyfus program is unique. Then there's the Senior Scientist Mentor Program, which provides support to retired but still research-active chemical scientists to appoint undergraduates as research assistants. This also is a program unique to Dreyfus.
Bob says: "I've seen my role as helping to identify pathways for smart people to do important things. Now I'm looking forward to exploring new possibilities in Atlanta, where my wife is director of publishing strategy at the American Cancer Society." The Dreyfus Foundation has touched many lives across the chemical enterprise. Bob's tireless spirit, intellectual prowess, boundless energy, and sense of humor have helped make that possible. Thanks, Bob, for a job well done. We're looking forward to seeing what exciting ideas you have in store in your next career!