![Players kneel on the field for A Call to Men Football Camp](/sites/default/files/styles/width_550/public/2024-06/a_call_to_men_football_camp_2024_03.jpeg?h=9d677d3a&itok=XP3ZzwpA)
The Right Chemistry
![Dr. Michelle Boucher](/sites/default/files/styles/width_960/public/2019-02/chem_lab_0210_027.jpg?h=4be4306a&itok=dSzBOm3c)
Assistant Professor of Chemistry Michelle Boucher inspires a cadre of undergraduate researchers to break new ground.
“I’ve got just one word for you,” went the line from the 1967 film The Graduate. “Plastics.”
Comedic value aside, the word represents a serious source of intellectual enthusiasm for Michelle A. Boucher, assistant professor of chemistry at UC, who has been experimenting with the molecular composition of plastics most of her adult life.
“Traditionally there is a 30 percent loading of clays in plastics. I’m looking to get the same properties at about 5 percent loading,” she says with some excitement in her voice. “That’s what I’m aiming for, and I’m seeing good results.”
Boucher and her students are currently engaged in two branches of primary research – one involving plastics, the other, sugars – that may ultimately represent significant contributions to the field of materials science and the College’s reputation as a center of research excellence.
Perhaps more importantly, the projects offer UC’s third- and fourth-year chemistry majors what may be considered an extremely rare commodity in the broader world of undergraduate science education: an opportunity to do real science with some of the best tools available and conduct meaningful research of a quality typically seen only at the graduate level.
Boucher admits that this is a far cry from her own undergraduate experience.
“I did my undergrad at an R-1 (research) institution, and I worked with a group for a year and a half,” she recalls. “The research ended up getting into a very good journal, but I will tell you, I was the crystals monkey. I made the crystals, made the crystals, made the crystals…I did not do any of the analysis, and they did not trust me with any of the instruments. So I went to graduate school with a lot less hands-on experience with instrumentation than my students have right now.”
Though her current research interests first took root during her graduate work at Case Western Reserve University, much of the lab work involved is appropriate even for first- and second-year UC students. “The concepts of my research really do tie closely into freshman chemical concepts. Most of my students start working with me in their sophomore year because there is a highly synthetic component to the work. It still involves very simple syntheses, and it’s a very accessible project for the undergraduate
hands and skill set,” says Boucher.
Even so, the objectives are lofty ones. Boucher’s sugar research – a project she’s been laboring on for years in collaboration with Dr. Kimberly Musa Specht, assistant professor of chemistry at Dennison College – involves building a foundation of basic science that may lead to breakthrough medical applications such as permanent sterilization of surgical instruments.
“Sugars have been known to interfere with the protein bindings of bacteria,” Boucher explains. “Kimberly Specht’s research looks at applying sugars to the surface of an object to try to make it antibacterial. Up to now, biochemists have often just been splattering the sugars on and hoping they get a thick enough layer for the desired effect. Chemists don’t like that – we like control. So we’ve been working on a kind of silicon framework that will make the sugar molecules stand in neat little rows.”
That work starts with minerals like apophyllite, a naturally occurring silicate that has a two-dimensional lattice-like molecular structure – a kind of “backbone,” as Boucher terms it. Minerals of this kind, both naturally occurring and artificial, provide the basis for synthesizing materials with properties applicable to the sugars project.
“Silicates provide something like a sheet with preassembled order to it – groups of molecules set at fixed distances,” Boucher says. “Biochemists are interested in the idea of taking a sugar and building a silicon framework around it. Well, I’ve got the silicon framework. I’ve just got to find a way to stick it on there.” Silicates are also useful in developing new types of plastics that may ultimately prove relevant to a range of industrial applications. That process starts with a preplastic, such as a silicone fluid or an organic polymer, into which Boucher introduces a chemically modified silicate. “I then tangle them all together and cast them into these tiny little bricks of plastic,” she explains.
Assisting her is a small cadre of juniors and seniors – chemistry majors who were Boucher’s students at the sophomore level, at which time they showed an interest in research. “We have an apprenticeship model,” says Boucher. “By the time they’re seniors, they’re coming up with their own ideas and they’re taking ownership of the project – that’s exactly where I want them to be. But at the end of the day, the system is that a student comes into a professor’s project and it is in the context pioneer 20 Summer 2010 Utica College of that research that they learn the physical skills of being a chemist.”
She starts them out on something relatively simple: synthesizing a material she calls AM3, which is a simple tri-methyl apophyllite polymer.
“This material has been known for 20 years. It’s the simplest thing on earth. But we make it a couple of times simply so that they can get the hang of the synthetic route,” says Boucher. “And because it is so well characterized and understood, they can see where their batches differ, what they’ve done wrong, how they can improve it.”
This proves to be a kind of prequalification round. Boucher works closely with them at this stage, helping them develop their skills and define their interests.
“Once they get the hang of that – I have six students working with me at this point – we start talking about what project they might be interested in.”
A “brag -able” suite of instruments
For the non-scientist – particularly someone whose concept of chemistry was gleaned from old science fiction movies – the aging laboratory spaces within Gordon Science Center where Boucher and her charges do their work contain some familiar-looking items: beakers and test tubes, an old glove box, Bunsen burners, and so on. But appearances can be deceiving.
“We don’t use open flame that much anymore,” Boucher says, smiling. “We do a little glass work, and I did use it in college. In the ’90s they still thought that was a skill we ought to have, and I had one older professor who felt like we needed to respect the history. But nobody’s going to use open flames in industry. We want to teach the students up-to-date stuff.”
To that end, UC offers an extremely sophisticated suite of chemistry instrumentation.
“We have an instrument suite that is brag-able for any small institution,” she says. “I always planned my projects to be workable for a small school with teaching instrumentation. The fact that we’ve got huge amounts of teaching instrumentation is a bonus.”
Boucher says that she and her students frequently use the infrared spectrometer, depending upon what project they are working on. “For the soluble molecules you’ve got the entire array of instruments open to you,” she continues. “We use the Bruker 250Mhz Fourier Transform Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometer (FTNMR). It’s like an MRI for molecules. [Associate Professor and Chair of Chemistry] Curtis Pulliam wrote the grant for that years ago, and it’s a huge feather in our cap. And the quality of the high performance liquid chromatograph (HPLC) and gas chromatograph - mass spectrometer (GC/MS) we have is really top-drawer.”
Much of the advanced technical equipment was funded through a NASA grant, which the College invested in teaching instrumentation. Boucher describes this as an important factor in attracting students to UC’s chemistry program.
“We’re starting to get students whose parents are professionals,” she explains. “They are looking at other schools that might – perhaps unfairly – have a better reputation than ours. And then they come into our instrument suite and say, ‘Wow, you’ve got this, and you have small classes? And you care about the students?’”
In spite of the unusually high grade of technology available to her undergraduate charges, Boucher admits that, on occasions, their laboratory work does at least superficially resemble the B-movie stereotype. “In the plastics project, we use solvents and water condensers, we boil it and it comes back down, so it looks a little bit like we’re running a mad scientist’s lab,” she says, laughing.
“Good lab hands”
In high school, he was told he was a good writer. It was that and little else that convinced Mike Bayne ’10 to become an English major.
Bayne is now a fourth-year student of Boucher’s and a key member of her chemistry research A-team. Not the outcome he had expected when he started at UC, but a highly satisfactory one, nonetheless.
“I may not be the typical example of a chemistry student,” Bayne warns. “In high school, I was strong in math, but I never had a teacher who could get me interested in science. I had a very good English teacher, though, so I thought I’d be an English major in college.”
Bayne says he applied to UC because it had a strong English department and small class sizes, but in spite of these strengths, he felt out of place in the major. “I was a good writer; I just didn’t like doing it. An essay that took other students maybe an hour to write might take me six hours. It came out well, but it took forever. After a while I thought, I can’t do this,” he says.
His change of direction was prompted by a freshman-level science course he took to satisfy his core requirements: Chemistry and Society, taught by Assistant Professor Michelle Boucher.
“It was a very basic class. You learn about how soap works, that sort of thing. But it was the first time I had a really good chemistry instructor who was excited about teaching and gave real-world applications,” says Bayne. “And I discovered I was pretty good at it.”
Bayne’s research is focused on what his professor describes as very typical organic synthesis related to the sugar project. Bayne’s research continues the work of one of his predecessors, Emily Corcoran ’08, who is now attending graduate school.
“You only have about two years to do research,” Bayne says. “Sometimes we don’t get the opportunity to finish the projects we’re working on. But I think you do get a sense of ownership about them, nevertheless.”
“Mike’s been working with me for over a year,” says Boucher. “He’s got really good lab hands.”
By March of 2010, Bayne – by then finishing his final semester before moving on to graduate study at Syracuse – was more hopeful of realizing closure on his project. “I’m seeing signs of completing it, but we still have to get better yields,” he says.
Two other members of Boucher’s research team, Shannon Penoyer ’10, who also graduated this year, and Thuy Nguyen ’11, have already completed their pieces of the apophyllite puzzle.
On the other hand, fellow researcher Craig Sherwood, a junior, has been working on what Boucher calls a “persnickety” reaction – synthesizing a polymer that they haven’t made before – and running into some challenges in the process. “It hasn’t been going so happily just lately,” Sherwood says, laughing.
Boucher considers this one of the great things about research. “Craig will do a reaction and ask, is this the way it’s supposed to look? And we’ll just kind of look at each other and say, I don’t know – no one’s ever made it before,” she says.
An intellectual home
Whether or not their work yields scientifically interesting data, the process of students working collaboratively produces some very positive outcomes. It is, in fact, an integral part of the apprenticeship model.
“There’s a definite mentorship process here. Students who don’t think of themselves as leaders or teachers realize that they are able to help younger members of the group, and they actually come to have more confidence in their own abilities because of it,” says Boucher.
The younger students benefit too. “Some of my students start in my group not because they are interested in my chemistry but because they liked me as a teacher, which is flattering and kind,” she says. “But I am aware that they are looking for an intellectual home. And it’s great to see them respond not just to me but to the older members of the group. They think, ‘Hey, this cool senior actually wants to teach me something. I might not be half bad.’ And they discover their confidence that way. Learning from peers makes a huge difference. It’s a lot of fun.”
Bayne jokingly refers to their collaboration as “a triangle of confusion,” but it’s clear that these researchers share a strong rapport with one another, as well as a high regard for their professor.
“I really like working with Dr. Boucher,” Penoyer says. “She’s comfortable to talk to. When I have a question about anything, I go and ask her – even things outside of chemistry. She probably knows my entire life story. If I’m having a bad day, she’ll say, ‘It’s okay, we’ll do something more relaxed.’ She’s very caring.”
Another member of the group, Huy Hong ’11, concurs. “When we have a problem, she doesn’t put us down. Instead of saying something that would make us feel bad, she motivates us to try to get better results next time. Her motivation really helps,” he says.
“She’s like a mother to all of us,” Bayne adds, making the others laugh, then adopts a somewhat more earnest tone.
“When I took my first class with Dr. Boucher, she was energetic, incredibly knowledgeable, and made chemistry really fun and understandable,” he says. “And I realized chemistry was what I wanted to do, not what someone told me to do or told me I would be good at. Essentially you want to choose a career that you can have fun in, that you’re interested in. She put that excitement and interest into it.”
More Stories
![Players kneel on the field for A Call to Men Football Camp](/sites/default/files/styles/width_550/public/2024-06/a_call_to_men_football_camp_2024_03.jpeg?h=9d677d3a&itok=XP3ZzwpA)
![Teacher in a classroom with students raising their hands.](/sites/default/files/styles/width_550/public/2022-05/classroom_teacher_with_students_-_education.jpg?h=4d1c0e98&itok=sBiGr9K1)
Utica University Receives $1.2 Million NYS Grant for Accelerated Educator Preparation Program; Teacher Candidate Applications Now Open
![A blue Utica University banner hangs outside Rocco DePerno Hall.](/sites/default/files/styles/width_550/public/2022-03/Blue%20University%20Banner%20outside%20DePerno%20-%20Campus%20Scenic%20Winter%2022.jpg?h=2099b46d&itok=2Fe85_V1)
Utica University announces new leadership roles
I would like to see logins and resources for:
For a general list of frequently used logins, you can also visit our logins page.