Retirements

Chris Schaller joined the Chemistry Department in 1996. He was truly a “renaissance chemist”, with expertise spanning organic, inorganic, bioinorganic and polymer chemistry. His wide-ranging knowledge served us well as he prepared an online textbook covering the first fours semesters of our integrated chemistry curriculum. This work has now gone national due to its incorporation into Libretexts, a webbased collection of chemistry textbooks. As an excellent communicator, Chris served as the lead author in the department’s numerous publications describing aspects of our novel curriculum. He also was the lead author and publisher of The Cavendish Chronicle, a newsletter sent to department alums. In addition, he mentored many undergraduate research projects and published research papers with student coauthors, a particularly challenging feat in the field of chemistry. Chris was an engaging classroom instructor and was able to draw on examples from everyday life and the chemical literature to illustrate his teaching. He was a recipient of the Sister Mary Grell Teacher of Distinction Award. The department will miss the way he treated faculty colleagues and students as valued collaborators, his calm demeanor, his dry, clever sense of humor, artistic skill, and the soothing, plant-filled space that was his office. Thank you Chris for your dedication and service to the College of Saint Benedict and St. John’s University!