On November 10, 2022, under the recommendation of the Academic Personnel committee, the faculty of the Department of Chemistry met in an executive session and voted unanimously to recommend the appointment of Professor Charles Campbell as Emeritus Professor of Chemistry and the appointment of Teaching Professor Deborah Wiegand as Emeritus Teaching Professor of Chemistry. We congratulate Professors Wiegand and Campbell on their retirements in autumn quarter 2022!
Deborah Wiegand
Teaching Professor Emerita
Teaching Professor Deborah Wiegand earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Illinois in 1973. She then worked as a chemist for Dean Foods Company and an instructor at Rockford College before earning her Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from Northern Illinois University in 1990.
Wiegand began her career at the University of Washington as a Lecturer in the Department of Chemistry in 1990. She created the Women in Science program, a community for undergraduates during their first two years of chemistry coursework, and Science Service Learning, a series of courses that connected community service to scientific work. In 1995, she was promoted to Senior Lecturer.
In 2001, Wiegand shifted to a role in campus administration for undergraduate education, servin as Director of Academic Counseling and Director of the UW Gateway Center from 2002-2004. She then served as the Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Academic Affairs from 2004-2013. During this period, Wiegand made wide-ranging contributions to student welfare and served on numerous high level university committees related to undergraduate education. She oversaw the creation of Academic Support Programs and the expansion of programming for incoming students by First Year Programs. Her collaboration with UW-IT resulted in two new applications, EARS (Electronic Academic Record System), a tool for advisers and other academic support staff, and MyPlan, an advising tool for students.
Wiegand returned to the Department of Chemistry in 2013 in a full-time position as Senior Lecturer and Director of Entry-Level Programs and was promoted to Teaching Professor in 2016. She has been a key leader in our undergraduate teaching program and one of her many contributions has been the revision of the first-year curriculum to an “atoms first” approach.
Wiegand’s work in science education has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and acknowledged by UW’s first S. Sterling Munro Public Service Faculty Fellowship, the American Association of Colleges and Universities SENCER Award, Campus Compact SEAMS Award, and being named a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Wiegand has been a significant contributor to the overall undergraduate educational mission of the University for many years. We have been very fortunate to have Wiegand share her experience, insight, and leadership with Chemistry in her roles as an instructor and as a critical contributor to the administration of our undergraduate educational program.
Professor Wiegand retired on November 2, 2022, and was granted the title of Teaching Professor Emerita of Chemistry, effective November 3, 2022.
To learn more about Professor Wiegand and her career, please visit her faculty page and the Chemistry Education page.
Charles Campbell
Professor Emeritus
Professor Charles Campbell earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1975. He earned his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from UT Austin in 1979 under the direction of J. M. White and then conducted postdoctoral research with Gerhard Ertl at the University of Munich (Ertl won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2007). In 1981, Campbell joined the staff at Los Alamos National Laboratory where he began his independent research career in catalysis. He entered academia in 1986 as Associate Professor at Indiana University.
Campbell moved to the University of Washington in 1989 as Associate Professor of Chemistry. He was promoted to Professor of Chemistry in 1992, and he holds adjunct titles in Physics and Chemical Engineering. He was the founding co-director for the Center for Nanotechnology at the UW in 1997 and served as its sole director from 2003-04. From 2001-06, Campbell served as the co-director for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory-UW Joint Institute for Nanoscience. From 2004-2012, Campbell held the Lloyd E. and Florence M. West Endowed Professorship in Chemistry, and since 2012 has held the B. Seymour Rabinovitch Endowed Chair in Chemistry.
Few researchers have contributed more to the understanding of catalytically relevant surface chemical processes than Campbell. This includes deep, long-lasting contributions to the science of transition metal surfaces, their catalytic reaction mechanisms, their adsorbate thermodynamics, and the effects of metal nanoparticle size, thereby advancing catalytic technologies of great societal importance. Campbell has a long record of service on national and international scientific review and advisory committees, scientific advisory boards, and in professional societies and their committees, and as Chair of the ACS Colloid and Surface Chemistry Division. He has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Surface Science from 2002-2012 and of the journal Surface Science Reports since 2013. Over the last three decades, he has contributed significantly to departmental and University committees and organized numerous symposia. All through his career, Campbell has been a dedicated mentor, holding high his expectations of his students and trainees, resulting in their success. He served as research advisor for 36 PhD students, 11 MS students and 39 postdoctoral researchers.
Over his illustrious career, Campbell garnered several awards and honors including the Medard W. Welch Award from the American Vacuum Society (2015), the ACS Catalysis Division Award for Exceptional Achievements in Catalysis (2020), the ACS Arthur W. Adamson Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Surface Chemistry (2007), and the ACS Award in Colloid or Surface Chemistry (2001). Early in his career, Campbell won an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award, and a DuPont Young Faculty Award. Campbell is an Elected Member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences (2013), and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2010), the American Chemical Society (2011), and the American Vacuum Society (2016). He also has been internationally recognized through various lectureships and awards, including the Gauss Professorship and Humboldt Award in Germany, and as an Honorary Fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society.
Professor Campbell retired on December 31, 2022, and was granted the title of Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, effective January 1, 2023. He remains active in research.
To learn more about Professor Campbell and his career, please visit his faculty page and his research group website.