Blue Hen Chemist Number 36

August 2009
A Tale of Two Mentors
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From L to R: Prof. Tom Beebe, Prof. Michael Morse, Carolyn Edlund, Bruce Edlund, Prof. David Grainger. Morse and Grainger are professors at Utah who served on Jennifer's posthumous Ph.D. committee. Grainger was also Jennifer's undergraduate research supervisor, then at Colorado State University.

 

Seven years after her death, the task of putting together Jennifer’s Ph.D. dissertation was finally complete.

 


A Tale of Two Mentors, Two Students, and Fate


I suffered an emotional body blow on May 1, 1971, when I learned that one of my doctoral students, Joel L. Silver, had been killed in an automobile accident that also resulted in serious injuries to his fiancée and mother. Joel’s brand-new MG-B was broadsided by a truck at the intersection of PA 896 and old US 1 in Forestville, PA.

My reaction, after getting past the initial shock, was one of total frustration. Joel, a 1967 graduate of Drew University, was a student who had succeeded more on the basis of hard work than raw ability. Thus, I was exceedingly happy for him, when the light had finally appeared at the end of his doctoral tunnel, and he had just begun to write his Ph.D. dissertation. Searching for a way to add meaning to his untimely end, I did two things.

First, I decided to complete his doctoral dissertation, so that he could receive his Ph.D. posthumously. This provided the emotional catharsis that I needed so badly. The degree was awarded in June, 1972, and was the basis of a published full paper [Inorganic Chemistry, 10, 994 (1971)].

Secondly, I initiated a campaign among his fellow students, relatives and friends to create an endowment to support a Joel L. Silver Memorial Symposium. The Symposium was modeled after the Gelewitz Memorial Symposium at my doctoral alma mater, Northwestern University. The latter memorialized a graduate student who had been killed in a plane crash, and involved a prize given annually for the best research presentation by a departing graduate student. (Ironically, I won the Gelewitz Prize in 1963). The first Silver Award Symposium was held in 1973, and the first Silver Awardee, as noted elsewhere in this BHC, was William A. Welsh (PhD74), a doctoral student in the research group of Prof. Thomas Brill (FAC 70-06).

In 1974, and at each Silver Award Symposium since then, my opening remarks have always included a statement to the effect that “I was the only CHEM prof I knew who had written TWO complete doctoral dissertations in chemistry.” Little did I know… At this point, let me turn the narrative over to Prof. Thomas Beebe, Jr.

jennifer1.tifAfter the successful unloading of all instruments, Jennifer (front) and Dr. Albert Schnieders (back) celebrate with a playful tip of the hat to Leonardo da Vinci and his famous sketch, Vitruvian Man, from approximately 1487. 17 September 2001.

Moving an established, medium-sized, equipment-intensive research group across the country was never something that I planned. But in September of 2001, just days before our nation’s great tragedy, several graduate students and postdocs, having recently driven from Salt Lake City to Newark, met the moving vans at the loading dock behind Brown Lab. Included in this group was Jennifer Dawn Alexander, a bright and ambitious fourth-year graduate student with just a few months of experiments and writing left before she could defend her Ph.D. dissertation. The plan was that she would complete her remaining experiments in our labs at UD, write everything up, and then we would both travel back to the University of Utah for her defense in the Chemistry Department, where the vast majority of her experimental work and all of her courses had been completed.

jennifer3.tifOur plan was tragically interrupted on January 28, 2002, when I learned, by a late-night phone call, of the untimely death of Jennifer, at age 27. For unknown reasons, the trail of notification that the police followed ran through Prof. John Burmeister, and, ironically, it was John who had to deliver the terrible news to me. At the time details were sketchy. I later learned that Jennifer died alone in her apartment after a reoccurrence of a rare childhood seizure disorder. Seizures had not affected her for nearly 12 years, since she was a high school student, when her doctor ordered that she stop taking her seizure medication.

It was my saddest daywhen Matt Wells, oneof Jennifer’s labmates, and I met Carolyn and Bruce Edlund, Jennifer’s parents, at the airport. The Edlunds arrived in Delaware on a one-way ticket because they had come to perform the unthinkably sad task of packing up their late daughter’s apartment and driving her car back home to Colorado. The loss of a child is the worst tragedy that a parent can endure. Despite the sadness in her heart at that time, Mrs. Edlund managed to exude a remarkably peaceful aura that I will never forget. In my time of great sadness, sadness that could not even begin to compare with hers, she was a calming and peaceful influence on me and the whole research group, all of us grieving over the loss of such a close friend and wonderful young lady. When I asked Mrs. Edlund about this later, she told me that she derived her strength and sense of peacefulness by remembering the spirit of Jennifer: her warm, friendly smile, her laid-back approach to life, and her patient and kind support of a friend in need. Mrs. Edlund had turned feelings of sadness and turmoil into feelings of joy and peacefulness.

Seven years after her death, the task of putting together Jennifer’s Ph.D. dissertation was finally complete. I was filled with feelings of joy, pride, and admiration that we were finally able to assemble the body of work that was Jennifer’s Ph.D., consisting of 5 peer-reviewed publications. It was with a heavy heart that I traveled back to Salt Lake City in May of 2009 to again meet Jennifer’s parents. With a great sense of emotional catharsis, I presided over the posthumous awarding of the Ph.D. degree in Chemistry at the University of Utah’s Commencement and Convocation. I was able to present Jennifer’s Ph.D. diploma, a Ph.D. hood and dissertation to her parents. Jennifer was an only child, and so it was especially difficult to present Mrs. Edlund with a corsage on Mother’s Day weekend.

Like Dr. Joel L. Silver, Prof. Burmeister’s former Ph.D. student, Dr. Jennifer D. Alexander is memorialized each year. Jennifer’s friends, relatives, and coworkers have established an endowed scholarship at Jennifer’s undergraduate institution, the Colorado State University. The Jennifer Dawn Alexander Scholarship, is awarded yearly in the CSU Department of Chemistry as a memorial to Jennifer “to recognize, encourage, and provide impact to similar young, promising students of chemistry.”