Gretchen E. Hofmeister

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Teaching Interests:

My teaching interests are primarily in organic chemistry (with laboratory), both at the introductory and advanced level. In addition, I have taught introductory and organometallic chemistry and advanced laboratory courses. The advanced laboratory courses are research-like experiences, which incorporate open-ended experiments, advanced NMR spectroscopy, and regio-, stereo- or enantio-selective reactions.
I am currently teaching a first-year seminar course, which is designed to develop critical thinking, writing, and speaking skills in first-year students, in the context of a particular area of study. My course concerns the chemistry of drugs—the chemical basis by which we understand how several different classes of drugs, such as alcohol and other psychoactive drugs, antibiotics, and anticancer agents induce characteristic physiological responses.

Research Interests:

My research concerns preparing new two-coordinate and three-coordinate phenols, which will bind to metal centers to generate complexes whose three-dimensional structure can be used to control how other molecules approach the metal center. The goal of preparing compounds of this type is to develop new metal-based reagents that will selectively control the outcome of organic transformations or polymerization reactions, similarly to how biological enzymes selectively control the transformation of biological metabolites or the synthesis of biological polymers.  

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