Chemistry and Biochemistry

“I feel like at a bigger school, I’d be very intimidated to talk to my professor in that way, where we can be vulnerable with each other. Having that small faculty-to-student ratio makes it very comfortable to have conversations like that.”

The “Big Bang” may have started the universe but it’s likely that smaller bangs played a key role in life on Earth, say Albion College physics professor Nicolle Zellner and chemistry professor Vanessa McCaffrey.

Not only did chemistry professor Craig Streu, ’04, successfully direct his students in all-remote projects this summer, he also led them in researching how institutions across the country did the same. The results of this additional project were featured in a recent edition of ASBMB Today, the journal of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Chemistry professor Craig Streu, a 2004 Albion alumnus, and his student researchers are on the cutting edge of developing light-responsive chemotherapy to battle different types of diseases, from arthritis to Alzheimer’s to perhaps the biggest obstacle of all—cancer.

One of the May 4 Commencement speakers, Barbara Weiskittel, ’83, was born and raised in Albion and the city and College have remained important to her since. Indeed, over the years she has made significant gifts to Albion’s Big Read, Build Albion Fellows, the restoration of downtown Albion and more. “I want the school and the community together to grow and thrive,” she says.

Chemistry professor Lisa Lewis is using a yearlong grant from the National Sciene Foundation to work on an initiative that will create new policy, resources and infrastructure to help U.S. institutions discover, manufacture and deploy advanced materials twice as fast. “It’s going to change how we do science,” she said.

Hannah Schoon, ’19, expected to spend this past summer becoming a technician of sorts for a highly specialized piece of research equipment (a mass cytometer) at the Mayo Clinic. That job got interrupted—and as a result, Schoon is co-author of a paper published this month in the prestigious Blood Cancer Journal.

Emeritus professor of chemistry Dan Steffenson passed away May 16 in Saline, Michigan, at the age of 77. A member of Albion College’s Chemistry Department from 1967 until 2008, Steffenson was legendary for his professional devotion on a campus rife with passionate instructors.

Bram Siemers, ’19, hopes to graduate from Albion College with a degree in biochemistry and use the experience he gained from four years in the Marines, which included tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, to forge a next-generation career that can help save lives.

Craig Streu, ’04, won’t say the words. No one can say the words. Not now. Not yet—that maybe, possibly, a cure for cancer awaits somewhere just around the corner. And while Streu—in his first year as an assistant professor of biochemistry at his alma mater—won’t say those words, he will allow himself the next best thing. “It could be one of the tools of the arsenal to cure cancer,” he says with all of the diplomacy he can muster.