Episode description

Before our first season of The POGIL Podcast officially begins, we would like to introduce you to each of our hosts in this inaugural season of the POGIL podcast.

First, we have Dr, Alex Grushow. Alex received a B.A in chemistry from Franklin & Marshall College and a Ph.D. from University of Minnesota. He is currently a Professor of Chemistry at Rider University and Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Since his days as an undergraduate he has been fascinated by intermolecular forces and has published papers on molecules held together by hydrogen bonding, van der Waals forces, dative bonding and ion-molecule interactions. He has worked as a Program Director for the National Science Foundation and has worked in chemistry examination development for both ETS and the ACS Examinations Institute. He has also been heavily involved in innovating the teaching of physical chemistry; starting as a member of the Physical Chemistry Online Consortium (PCOL) and most recently as a co-PI on two NSF grants to develop POGIL experiments in Physical Chemistry (POGIL-PCL). For The POGIL Project itself, Alex is a past member of the Steering Committee and is also a co-Author of the Quantum Chemistry and Spectroscopy book published by the POGIL Press.

In addition to Alex, we have Wayne Pearson.

After growing up in Salisbury Maryland, Wayne received degrees at Virginia Tech (B.S. Chemistry 1974), University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (M.S. in Teaching of Physical Sciences 1976) and University of Missouri-Columbia (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 1986). After a year at University of Notre Dame as staff crystallographer, he joined the faculty at the United States Naval Academy where he taught chemistry for thirty-two years until his retirement in December of 2019. After attending a 3-day workshop in 2009, Wayne became a POGIL practitioner, emphasizing inquiry learning in general chemistry, inorganic chemistry and X-ray crystallography courses. Now that he is retired, Wayne spends his time writing and recording music, caring for his tropical fish, staying active with research in small-molecule crystallography and working for the POGIL Project.