OU CELEBRATES 30-YEAR COLLABORATION WITH TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN
lg/11-08-06
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Lacey Gray, (405) 325-2099
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NORMAN – The University of Oklahoma recently celebrated the 30-year anniversary of a collaborative exchange program between the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Technical University of Berlin. The exchange program, which began in 1976, was the result of collaboration between then OU chemistry department chair, Jerold J. Zuckerman, and TUB chemistry professor Herbert Schumann.
Schumann, along with Professors Ekkehardt Hahn (University of Münster) and Christoph Janiak (University of Freiburg), two of the program’s first German students who studied at OU in the early 1980’s, returned to the OU campus in September for the 30-year celebration. Professors Schumann, Janiak and Hahn presented public lectures through the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry’s J. Clarence Karcher Distinguished Lecture series. Schumann also was presented with a plaque in honor of his leadership in establishing the exchange program.
In a letter dated Sept. 22, 1976, from OU President Paul F. Sharp to TUB President Alexander Wittkowsky, Sharp wrote, “It would be my pleasure to work with you in establishing an international collaborative effort between our two institutions. I am enthusiastically in favor of this proposal and will give it my fullest support.”
The following summer, on July 1, 1977, the final partnership agreement was signed by Sharp and Rolf Berger, Wittkowsky’s successor as president of TUB. The goal of the partnership, written in the agreement, reads, “The exchange should make possible the observation of and participation in research projects in the areas of a) organometallic chemistry and b) inorganic, physical, organic and biochemistry, including the participation in scientific discussions and seminars.”
From its inception in 1976, the program has involved high quality chemistry research, starting with Zuckerman’s and Schumann’s research groups. In 1981, when Glenn Dryhurst replaced Zuckerman as Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at OU, he opened the program up to all groups of students and faculty in the department, leading to an expanded exchange of scholarly ideas and research.
Dryhurst, who served as chair of the department for 25 years before the appointment of the current chair, George Richter-Addo, said, “The on-going, collaborative program is an excellent educational and professional experience for faculty and students from both universities.”
Richter-Addo said the exchange program between OU and TUB is a great example of a program that is working to internationalize OU.
“European science has a different flavor,” Richter-Addo said. “The training and exposure of our faculty and students to that system raises their quality of research.”
Dryhurst and Schumann agreed that each year the program would send one OU faculty member to Germany for a 2-to-3-day visit, which usually included a seminar presentation, all expenses paid, and that one TUB faculty member would come to OU for an equivalent amount of time. TUB pays the expenses for the OU faculty member, and the seminar fund in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at OU pays the expenses for the TUB faculty member.
Ronald Halterman, OU professor of chemistry, has served as the OU coordinator of the exchange program since the mid 1990s. He said the quality of the student body is raised due to the collaboration between OU and TUB.
Halterman, who spent a year in Germany on an Alexander Humboldt Fellowship in 1995, spent another 18 months in Germany as a visiting professor at TUB in 2001 and 2002, where he taught for three semesters.
Faculty are not the only participants who have benefited from the exchange program. Students from TUB have come to study at OU over the years, staying a few weeks to a year or more. Approximately 20 TUB students have spent a year or more at OU, researching and taking courses to complete their master’s or doctoral degrees.
One student who studied at OU through the exchange program from 1984 to 1985, Fabiola Janiak-Spens, decided to return to the university after receiving both her master’s and doctoral degrees from OU. She returned to campus in 1993 and currently is conducting research as a postdoctoral research associate with Ann West, OU professor of chemistry and biochemistry.
“The exchange program was a great experience for me; go abroad, travel to a new place that most people only associate with tornadoes,” Janiak-Spens said. “The most important aspect of it was that I was able to do research in a biochemistry lab, and I was considered a fledgling scientist, not just a student like in the German university system.”
Janiak-Spens said one of the main reasons she returned to OU to pursue her doctoral degree was because the professors’ office doors were always open to the students.
OU students who have participated in the exchange program typically go to TUB for a period of a few weeks to three or four months. A total of five OU students have traveled to Germany as a result of the program, studying and taking courses in organic and inorganic chemistry.
Robert Houser, Associate Professor and Assistant Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at OU, sent the most recent OU student to Germany two-and-a-half years ago. Eric Klein, who spent the summer of 2004 in Germany through an OU Presidential Travel Fellowship, received his doctoral degree in Chemistry in January 2006. Currently, he is a postdoctoral research associate with Professor John H. Enemark in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
“The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry is very fortunate to have an active international exchange program with the Technische Universität Berlin,” Klein said. “As part of the program, I traveled to Berlin to work on the preparation of several new molecules that were important to my existing project. Beyond the technical purpose of the trip, however, I found that experiencing research and academic life in Germany was far more valuable than I could have ever anticipated. Directly working with another research group in a very different academic system, in a foreign country, opened my eyes to new ways of thinking and gave me a much better perspective on my own graduate education and the collaborative process in real-world science.”
The experiences that faculty researchers and students have received over the past 30 years are the result of Schumann’s dedication to the collaborative exchange of ideas between OU and TUB.
When describing Schumann and his work, OU Chemistry and Biochemistry Chair Richter-Addo said, “He is an outstanding scientist who has given most of his life to mentoring young scientists and helping them be the best they can be. It is very refreshing to see that.”
Along with his dedication to the exchange program between OU and TUB, Schumann has dedicated his career to pursuits in education and research. Since receiving his Diplom-Chemiker in 1961 and his doctoral degree in 1962 from the University of Munich, Schumann has trained 106 doctoral students, authored over 600 publications, including 25 volumes of the Gmelin Handbook of Inorganic and Organometallic Chemistry, and has applied for over 53 patents. He has received many awards and been an invited professor or lecturer at many universities throughout the world. Schumann taught at the Universities of Marburg and Wurzburg before being appointed the chair of inorganic chemistry at TUB in 1970.
In October 2003, Schumann retired and became professor emeritus at TUB, but he continues to provide guidance and assistance for the exchange program. Currently, the program is coordinated by TUB faculty member, Andreas Grohmann, and OU chemistry and biochemistry professor Halterman.
Members of the chemistry and biochemistry faculty at OU hope the connections between the two universities can be strengthened even further in the future through the creation of an endowment to fund travel expenses.
“We have to continue to build ties,” Richter-Addo said. “It is going to be even more important to continue this program. It benefits the U.S. in the long-term by exposing faculty and students to high-quality research.”
Richter-Addo also said the program between OU and TUB is a model for other departments within the college and at OU, because, although TUB has exchange programs with the University of California, Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the involvement of TUB with OU far exceeds that of the other universities.
For additional information about the exchange program between OU and TUB or to help support a travel endowment for the program, contact Richter-Addo at (405) 325-4812 or
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