Department of Chemistry
           West Chester University
Office: 119 Schmucker
Science Center South
West Chester, PA 19383
Phone (610) 436-2631
Fax (610) 436-2890
Email: Department Chair

Alumni News

Do you have news? Marriages, births, jobs, advanced degrees, or just to let everybody know where you are. Looking for a long-lost alum? Found an alum? If your company is hiring, let us know.  Comments on the site?  Keep in touch here!  Please include name, graduation date, degree program, and an e-mail address, if available.  The site is updated near the beginning of each semester.
We do not publish e-mail addresses, but we will forward notes if we know the e-mail of the intended recipient.


Erum Azeez
A 2005 graduate in Forensic & Toxicological Chemistry, Erum now works at National Medical Services, Inc.


Joey Barnes
Joey is employed at McNeil Pharmaceuticals, after earning her B.S in Forensic & Toxicological Chemistry.


Ara Bush
A PreMed major (B.S. in Chemistry-Biology) in the Chemistry department, Ara was accepted to the Drexel School of Medicine, starting in the Fall of 2006.


Pamela Cook Reynolds
Pam is a 1996 graduate of our Forensic and Toxicological Chemistry undergraduate program, and is now working as a Forensic Examiner in the General Chemistry Subunit for the FBI laboratory in Quantico, VA. (updated 9/7/007)


Maren Dennis
Maren has elected to attend grad school at Villanova University, having earned the B.S. in Forensic & Toxicological Chemistry.


Jeff Evelhoch B.S. Chem 1977

This note from Jeff, who went on from WCU to get a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from UC, Riverside in 1981, and was an NIH Postdoc Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis until 1984.  He writes:  After 18 years on the faculty of Wayne State University School of Medicine, where I was Professor of Internal Medicine, Radiology and Oncology, I left there in the summer of 2002 to be Director of Magnetic Resonance in the Experimental Medicine Department of Pharmacia, based at the St. Louis site.  Shortly before I started there, it was announced that Pfizer was acquiring Pharmacia, a transaction that was completed in April 2003, so the family stayed in Michigan while I worked in St. Louis until the acquisition went through.  I then worked at the Pfizer Ann Arbor site as Global Head of MRI for World Wide Clinical Technology at Pfizer Global Research and Development until October 2004.  At that time, I began my current position as Director of Medical Sciences Imaging at Amgen (www.amgen.com) in Thousand Oaks, California. It's a great job in a great company (high caliber coworkers and intelligent management) and I am pursuing the translational research in which I am most interested, but found very difficult to pursue in academia.  My family (Nancy and our 3 teen-aged children) enjoy living in Thousand Oaks, which is north of LA towards Santa Barbara.
 
I hope to see news from some of my other mid-70s classmates who started their careers with the firm foundation the West Chester Chemistry Department gave us.
 
Best regards,
   Jeff Evelhoch

Steph Truesdale
With her B.S. in Chem Ed, Steph started her teaching career at Coatesville Area High School, as of Fall 2006.


Adanna Vardian
With her B.S. in Forensic and Toxicological Chemistry, Adanna found her first job at Alcoa, Inc.


Elijah Tan
Elijah reports that he has moved to Vertex Pharmaceutical in Cambridge, MA, where he works as a CMC (Chemistry, Manufacturing and Control) Specialist.  He has earned his M.S. in Pharmaceutical Quality Assurance/Regulatory Affairs at Temple U.


Arianne Motter
After graduation, Arianne  went to work at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology as a Forensic Toxicologist in Washington DC for one year. As of 2006, she is a first year graduate student at Georgetown University working toward a PhD in Pharmacology.


Peter Szczerba
Pete tells us reports that he is the laboratory manager of the diagnostic lab, as of January 2004.  His lab does clinical chemistry, hematology, microbiology, serology, molecular diagnostics and environmental monitoring for Merck Research Laboratories.  He earned his M.S. in Clinical Chemistry at WCU in 2001.


Janell Kiersnowski, DVM
Janell is a 2003 Chem-Bio graduate, and then graduated from Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine.  In June, 2007, she writes to us "Without WCU's help, I would never have been able to realize my potential.  Thank you!." 


Jill McLennan
Jill will deliver a paper at the national meeting of the American Academy for Forensic Science in February, 2003.  She is working for  the medical examiner's office in Wilmington, Delaware.


Logan Umberger
Logan delivered a paper at the national meeting of the Society of Forensic Toxicologists, Detroit in October, 2002.  Logan is working for  the medical examiner's office in Wilmington, Delaware.


Russell E. Emrich, M. D. (Chem. Bio. 1994) 
Russ went to medical school at MCP-Hahnemann  . After graduating in May of 1999, he did a residency in family
medicine at The Reading Hospital and Medical Center . As a second year resident, he served as the Assistant Chief Resident.  He is now the Chief Resident in his last year of post-graduate training.   He tells us, "WCU gave me a great foundation on which to build my profession. Please accept a heartfelt thank you from me to WCU."

Thanks for the kind words, Russ!


Dawn Cox (Forensic and Toxicological. Chemistry, 2000)
Dawn got a job with ARP (American Registry of Pathology) a private company. She is working at AFIP in Rockville, MD doing toxicology testing. She tells us that the work is interesting.


Kevin Brown  (BS, Chem.)
Kevin Brown is working at Purdue Pharma in Princeton, NJ..


Gretchen Smith (MS)
Gretchen got a job at Luzerne County Community College teaching chemistry lecture and lab. Maybe you can recruit some chem majors for us!


Jeff Murray (BS, Chem.)
Jeff Murray is working at Glaxo SmithKline and is nearly finished law school


John Hughes, '96.
John got his fourth patent.   He was awarded a Masters in Environmental Pollution Control at Penn State University at Great Valley.  He is living in Morgantown with his wife, who is expecting a baby in July.  
We will be looking forward to the blessed event!


Steve Wagner (Ralph Lichtenstein, BS Chem.)
Steve is working for Beckman-Coulter, selling HPLC, Capillary Electrophoresis, Centrifugation and DNA Sequencing Equipment. He is located in Cranford, New Jersey.


Paul Bidez
Paul is in a doctoral program in tissue engineering at Drexel.


Kim Parker
Kim is with the DEA in Virginia as of December 17, 2001.  Ho, ho, ho!


Cindy Shen
It's a boy!. Congratulations!


Mansoor Salahuddin ( MS Clinical Chemistry)
Monsoor got his MBA. Good show!


Mark Hardink ('98)
Mark is working at Pfizer Global R&D Headquarters in Groton, CT.


Joann Naef Coleman
You can check out Joann's paper in J. Chromatog. A 917 (1,2) 23-27. Good show!


Charles Zarnitz
Charles offers the following: "I just want you and your colleagues to know that (in retrospect) I appreciate (all of) your efforts and I appreciate the demands and rigor of the program which has helped me to become better than I ever thought possible. The degree I received from WCU helped me qualify for a new position with US Anchor in Pompano Beach, Florida, a manufacturer of adhesives, where I am responsible for Research, Development, and Operations."

Thanks for the kind words, Charles. That's what we need to hear!


Hany Naggar
Hany is currently working on a Ph. D. in Cellular Biology and Anatomy at the Medical College of Georgia. He has taken an interest in diabetic retinopathy.


Amy Posey (M.S. in Clin. Chem.)
Amy completed her undergraduate degrees from WCU in both Biochemistry and Chemistry in May, 2002, and joined the Dade Behring company in Newark, Delaware in their R&D division.  While working full time, she also tackled graduate studies, and earned her M.S. in Clinical Chemistry back here at WCU, in May, 2005.  Amy shared her wedding photos with her old friends on campus, from her September, 2007 ceremony.


Allison Lehr (Clin. Chem.)
Allison is now working on flu vaccines at Wyeth.


Kimberly Dilts, BS '89
Kim is working for Bayer in Connecticut.


Glen Binegar, BS
Glen works for a company which contracts with NASA. Outta this world!


Deborah Ferriola, BSEd '99
Deb is now working at WCU as Math/Science Coordinator for the tutoring center.


Lisa Watson Mundy, BS Forensic Chem '95 and Steve Mundy
Lisa is working for the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's office, and has been very generous with her time and talents, by returning to campus as a guest speaker in several courses in the Forensic and Toxicological Chemistry major, her old major.


John Koh, BS Chemistry '87 gave a talk entitled "100 Years of Chemistry - Looking Forward, Looking Back" at University Festival on October 3, 2000. John got his Ph. D. at Columbia and is now a faculty member at University of Delaware.  John was recently granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Delaware.


Kevin Brown, BS Chemistry '99 is working at ViroPharma in Exton, PA.


Clay McElwee BS Chemistry '99 is working for Sartomer Company in Exton, PA
Sartomer is a chemical company that supplies raw chemicals for various industrial processes. Most of their research goes into photoreactive chemicals but they also develop applications where these chemicals can be activated by the use of peroxides + heat. Clay's area of research includes the use of peroxide-curable additives in rubber formulations.


Debi Meiklejohn, BS Chemistry '96 reports from San Diego:
 I am currently working as a Senior Research Associate for Arena Pharmaceuticals in San Diego.