Hometown: Redlands Mesa, Colorado

Years at Kenyon: 20 (!)

The Pamela G. Hollie Endowed Chair was established to recognize faculty addressing global challenges. How can plastics research save the planet?

If we continue on our current path, plastics will account for at least 15 percent of the global carbon budget by 2050. This makes solving the plastics problem a gigaton emissions challenge. Most of these emissions are due to single use applications, which is why organizations like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation advocate for a circular economy. Simultaneously, the strong, light, durable materials we need to make more energy-efficient homes, automobiles, airplanes and windmill blades are nearly all synthetic plastics or composites.

What excites you most about the work you’re doing now?

Mostly, I am excited to be doing something that I think matters — working with early-career scientists on problems that are relevant to the climate crisis.

Why do this research at Kenyon?

There is a kind of delightfully untethered curiosity that runs rampant among so many students here. Yes, many of them have well-defined professional goals, even in their first year. But even as many much of society still seems to broadly accept that encouraging curiosity is one of the best ways to help young people grow.

What was your dream job as a kid?

I wanted to be a designer for Lego. I attribute much of my abilities as a chemist to the low quality of the Lego instruction manuals in the ’80s. You were given one view, and I don’t think all the pieces being used in a step were clearly called out. You had to be able to imagine the object in three dimensions and do a fair bit of figuring out, including referencing later views. As an organic chemist, that’s still a lot of what I do.

What’s one thing people would be surprised to learn about you?

I did not have the formal requirements to graduate with a chemistry degree from Beloit College. I started college intending to study neuroscience but then moved through molecular biology and biochemistry before finding myself as a scientist. By then it was my senior year and I couldn’t take all the required courses. I was already applying to graduate programs in chemistry and had so clearly become a chemist that the department chair generously signed off on my “special chemistry” degree.