Program: The chemistry department at Texas Lutheran University has an active successful chemistry program. Over the last 25 years we have averaged about 6-8 chemistry graduates per year, with approximately 50% being women. Most graduates go on to graduate school, medical or dental school; since 1990 over 60 chemistry majors have gone to graduate school in chemistry, and another 50 have gone to medical, dental, or veterinary schools. Others take jobs in industry or teach high school. Our students have attended graduate school or done post-doctoral work at Utah, Texas Tech, TCU, Baylor, Texas, Texas A&M, Rice, LSU, Wisconsin, Illinois, NC State, Duke, Harvard, Dartmouth, Florida, Cal-Davis, Washington, Yale, and others. Several were awarded special institutional awards, NSF fellowships, or NIH fellowships, and one received a von Humboldt Fellowship. Academic positions taken by our graduates include Colorado State, University of Texas-SA, Baylor, Trinity (San Antonio), Wittenberg, Wright State, St. Edwards, Stephen F. Austin, Johns Hopkins, Luther College, and SMU. 

Research: We have an active summer research program currently funded by the Welch Foundation ($35,000/year) and Southern Clay products ($10,000/year). This money is used to support a average of 10 students each year in our summer research program.  As a result of this research we have taken students to give papers or posters at national and regional meeting of the American Chemical Society in Dallas, Boston, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Memphis, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and Salt Lake City. Students have also given papers at Undergraduate research symposia at Baylor, A&M, Rice, and Trinity. Our students also earn very competitive slots in NSF funded undergraduate research programs in universities across the country.  We have had students attend SURF or REU programs at Colorado State, UC-Santa Barbara, Clemson, Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor, and Paris, France. 

Instrumentation: Currently we have the following operational instruments:  Varian 300 MHz FT-NMR, Finnegan GC-MS, Nicolet FTIR, Shamadzu UV-VIS, Waters HPLC with PDA detector, Buck AA, PE Fluorometer, DeltaNu Raman, Shamadzu DSC, Rheometrics Dynamic Mechanical Analyzer, a polymer tensile tester, and several GC’s.

Current faculty and their research interests are:

Bill Davis                     830-372-6046   WDavis@tlu.edu