UpDate - Vol. 13, No. 4, Page 1
September 23, 1993
John L. Burmeister named second alumni professor

     John L. Burmeister, associate chairperson and professor of chemistry
and biochemistry, has been chosen the University's second Alumni
Distinguished Professor.
     This named professorship recognizes excellence in teaching and
extraordinary commitment to students-qualities evident in conversation with
this man who has been on the Delaware faculty for 30 years.
     What's not evident are the personal honors and accolades that he has
accumulated over time. In conversation, all of those are decidedly
underplayed.
     Burmeister hands out a modest one-page biography and another sheet to
make sure the names of his mentors will be spelled correctly. So, it's
something of a surprise later to find his complete curriculum vitae is a
full 54 pages, listing awards, grants, publications and assorted other
honors.
     In conversation, Burmeister tells stories, wonderful little vignettes
about his life.
     His traditional discovery of the world of chemistry came after his
parents saved up to buy him a Gilbert Chemistry Lab when he was young.
     "My friend and I did absolutely crazy things as a result of that. We
took over a corncrib on his father's property and did things that today
would make OSHA go insane. Our neighborhood druggist gave us his unwanted
chemicals, and we liberally borrowed from our high school stockroom. Our
major goal during my senior year in high school was to build better and
better explosives! We killed several frogs that way.
     "It was the fun of chemistry that first attracted me to it. I loved
playing around with it and discovering its inherent logic, its fundamental
basis of reason."
     Burmeister got straight A's for 12 years of public school and is one
of only two Ph.D.s to come out of Butler Township (Pa.) High School. He
received a fully funded scholarship to Franklin and Marshall College in
Lancaster that came complete with summer jobs at Union Carbide Plastics Co.
in New Jersey. He earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry from F&M in
1959 and his doctorate in inorganic chemistry at Northwestern University in
1964.
     Burmeister toyed with the idea of going into the ministry, but two
five-minute sermonettes he delivered before his hometown congregation as a
teen were so agonizing for him that he ruled out that possibility. The only
classes he dreaded in college were swimming and public speaking. Not
surprisingly, the idea of teaching never occurred to him. Throughout his
undergraduate days, he fully expected to pursue a career in industry.
     It was still research that interested him in graduate school when,
homesick and pining for his girlfriend, Aileen (to whom he has now been
married for 33 years), he saw his three teaching labs as the bright spots
in his week.
     "Those were the wonderful days of the '60s. Research money was easy to
come by and, by graduation, I had nine trips for job interviews with
various companies scheduled.
     "The night before my first trip I couldn't sleep. Suddenly it hit me.
I didn't want to spend eight hours a day, five days a week in a lab. I
wanted to teach, but I knew that wasn't all I wanted to do. Suddenly, I
knew that the life of my mentor Fred Basolo, professor of chemistry at
Northwestern, was the precise image of what I wanted to do: He taught
freshman chemistry every year (and continued to do so until he retired at
age 70); he traveled and I love to travel; he had enough time to do
research; and financially, he was not a suffering servant.
     "My parents were dumbfounded and this change in plans did mean a 50
percent pay cut, from the $15,000 I had anticipated in industry to $7,000
as an instructor in inorganic chemistry at the University of Illinois at
Urbana. The much-maligned, old-boy network saved me. Basolo's mentor, John
C. Bailar Jr., needed someone at Urbana. He took me on Basolo's say without
so much as an interview.
     "I walked into my first lecture to face some 400-plus students. I had
a microphone strapped abound my neck and, for an instant, I felt the same
panic I had back as a teenager at the pulpit. Then I looked in their eyes
and remembered how I had felt as a freshman." His teaching career began.
     Although some would attribute Burmeister's career to hard work, he
says simply that he has "always been in the right place at the right time.
There is a lot of happy coincidence here," he says, reflecting on his life.
     For instance, by chance, he met William A. Mosher, then chairperson of
the University of Delaware's chemistry department, at a cocktail party at
an American Chemical Society meeting in Los Angeles, during his last year
in graduate school. Without ever previously considering Delaware as a
location for a career, he asked about an opening. Mosher told him to call
him the next year.
     With teaching interviews scheduled at West Virginia and Penn,
Burmeister squeezed in a trip to Delaware and "as is the case with so many
of our students, walked onto the Mall and was totally captivated by its
grace, beauty and timelessness." In 1964, he became the l3th member of the
chemistry department and the first inorganic chemist hired by the
University.
     "It was a great time to be starting up," Burmeister recalls. "Sputnik
had just gone up and America was in a panic. Support for the sciences was
enormous. It was a different time. My first 13 proposals were funded. I had
12 graduate students by the time I had been here four years. In 1968, I
received my first Excellence-in-Teaching Award and, l0 years later,
received a second one. In 1981, I received a national
excellence-in-teaching award from the Chemical Manufacturers Association. I
was a full professor in nine years, and I never really had to worry about
tenure. My start-up costs were about $10,000. Now, it costs hundreds of
thousands to get young professors started."
     Modeling himself on Basolo and Bailar, his "academic family tree,"
Burmeister vowed to try his best to "be all things to all people."
     "Like Basolo and Bailar, I have tried to lead to the fullest extent
the life of a chemistry professional in an academic setting. It is much
harder to be a generalist than a specialist, but I have tried to do it all.
Two years ago, I decided I was stretching myself a little thin and decided
that my 16th doctoral student would be my last.
     "Teaching is the much more human side of academia. You affect not just
the first generation, but ones that come later," Burmeister said.
     His decision to give up chemical research also was motivated by
changing funding patterns.  Although known as the father of ambidentate
ligand chemistry, when research in that area was difficult to fund,
Burmeister needed to shift the focus of his career. In 1974, he was
appointed the department's first and only associate chair. Because he had
always been interested in applying new teaching methods to his classroom, a
shift to pedagogical research seemed natural.
     "With dwindling returns on my (chemistry) research proposals, I had to
look at cause and effect. I discovered that, for me, research had really
always been a venue for teaching. The truth of the matter was that the most
important things I had done had been to facilitate my students' careers.
Second were the things that had lasting value chemically. (The chemical
research) was not something that I could dismiss lightly but moving into
something new and becoming an administrator was not a bitter pill to
swallow. I am very happy, very fulfilled. Basically, I feel like a person
who has retired and then taken a new job. Pedagogical research is like a
second career. It is invigorating.
     "While I'm on the leading edge of new teaching techniques, I'm not the
creator of anything. I'm a user. I've always been willing to try new
things. I'm a problem-solver. I'm always willing to try," Burmeister said.
     Some of the innovative techniques he has used successfully in the past
have been self-paced education options and videotapes of lectures that
students can use for review.
     Since l970, he has given all freshman examinations at night to avoid
the pressure of the timed "hour" examination. Since l973, his general
chemistry students have been provided with a complete set of detailed class
notes at the beginning of the term because he has always believed it is
more important for a student to comprehend what is being discussed than to
frantically take notes without understanding what they are writing.
     "It also makes me feel freer," he said. "I don't have a lot of
pressure if I have forgotten to mention something. It will be mentioned in
the notes."
     Additionally, he has always provided classes with a file of past
examinations, with completely worked-out answers.
     "It forces me to be creative by coming up with new exams each year,"
he said.
     Ten years ago, Burmeister said he re-experienced some of those old
feelings of apprehension when he began to teach non-majors for the first
time. Initially, he planned to teach Chemistry l05, designed for nursing
majors, for a few short years. Ten years later, he is still teaching it and
enjoying every minute.
     Projects for the future include investigation into cooperative
learning work groups and actively publishing the results of his self-paced
teaching methods.
     Meantime, he continues in his role as associate chair with no plans to
climb the administrative ladder.
     "I have no illusions about being chair or dean. I've found the higher
you go the more you shift your focus from people to budgets. Essentially I
don't like fighting for funding. I don't like dispersing funds, although I
admire those who do it well."
     In his spare time, Burmeister is a biker-commuting to his office on a
bicycle-and a hiker. His daughter, Lisa, has taught chemistry at St. Marks
High School, and his son, Jeff, a Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering
at Duke, is also considering a career in academia.
     Active on numerous University committees, Burmeister particularly
enjoys chairing the Athletic Governing Board, which makes him the
University's voting member of the NCAA. He also serves on the Trustee
Committee on Athletics. It almost makes up for not trying out for the
baseball team in college, when he was a "pretty good second baseman."
     Of the alumni professorship, Burmeister says: "The award means a great
deal to me first and foremost because it honors exactly what I have sought
to achieve. It responds to something I have always tried to do. They say it
takes two people to start a fraternity or sorority and Jim Soles (last
year's Distinguished Alumni Professor) and I now form the world's smallest
fraternity. It is a real honor to be in the same club with him.
     "When the chips are down, Jim and I are both lecturers first and
foremost, and I have to admit I really love being given a platform. I think
there are teachers who are more charismatic than I am and ones who have
more gimmicks, but there is no one who is ever more honored to be in front
of students than I."
                                        -Beth Thomas