{"id":312672,"date":"2018-04-18T08:35:56","date_gmt":"2018-04-18T12:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=312672"},"modified":"2018-04-18T08:37:44","modified_gmt":"2018-04-18T12:37:44","slug":"david-mccamant-wins-first-college-award-undergraduate-teaching-research-mentorship-312672","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/david-mccamant-wins-first-college-award-undergraduate-teaching-research-mentorship-312672\/","title":{"rendered":"David McCamant wins first College Award for Undergraduate Teaching and Research Mentorship"},"content":{"rendered":"

It will come as no surprise to his students that David McCamant, associate professor of chemistry<\/a>, is the inaugural recipient of the College Award for Undergraduate Teaching and Research Mentorship.<\/p>\n

When the word went out that he had been nominated, there was no shortage of students eager to lend their support.<\/p>\n

\u201cDave was always willing and happy to set aside time to explain a topic, whether for the first time or the fifth, coming up with new and inventive ways to bridge the knowledge gap each time,\u201d wrote Jessica Freeze \u201917, a graduate student at Yale.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been a TA for a variety of laboratory courses, but I have never met a professor who put in as much time or effort as Professor McCamant,\u201d wrote Kevin McClelland \u201915, a PhD student at Northwestern.<\/p>\n

\u201cProf. McCamant didn\u2019t see me as just a student in his CHM 231 class or an undergrad making mistakes in his research lab. He saw me as a young scientist with potential. Quite frankly, I don’t think I would have graduated with distinction or pursued graduate school without having Professor McCamant as a mentor,\u201d wrote Amanda Carr \u201916, a PhD student at Stony Brook.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is my role-model for how to be a successful professor,\u201d wrote Randy Mehleacher \u201910, a postdoc at Stanford University.<\/p>\n

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n

The award is funded by chemistry alumnus Frederick Lewis \u201968 (PhD) and his wife Susan Rice Lewis. It salutes Arts, Sciences & Engineering tenured faculty members who teach large, introductory classes as well as advanced seminars and independent study projects, and who mentor research experiences, especially those that involve laboratory training in the sciences and engineering. (Read more here.)<\/a><\/p>\n

McCamant says his goal is pass along to students the same excitement he felt as a chemistry undergraduate at Wesleyan University.\u00a0 Thanks to professors including \u00a0Stewart Novick and Pete Pringle, \u201cevery chemistry course I took in college just kept getting better and better,\u201d McCamant says.\u00a0 \u201cI was getting a deeper and deeper understanding within the specialty; more and more things started to make sense at a deeper level. And that\u2019s really fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCamant, who joined the faulty 12 years ago, says he:<\/p>\n