Dr. Moses Lee of the Furman University chemistry faculty has been appointed dean for the natural sciences at Hope College. He will assume his new responsibilities at in August.
"Moses Lee rose to the top of a very distinguished group of applicants for this position," said Dr. James Boelkins, provost at Hope. "He was selected because of his commitment to undergraduate science education and research, his vision for the sciences, his demonstrated success as scholar and teacher, his recognition in and contributions to the national science community, and his commitment to the mission and goals of Hope College and the Science Division."
Lee is the Rose J. Forgione Professor of Chemistry at Furman University, located in Greenville, S.C., where he has taught since 1989.
Through the years he has received external recognition including a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Scholar-Fellow Award, a Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and a Henry and Ellen Townes Assistant Professorship, and in 2001 he received the Furman University Meritorious Advising Award. He has received numerous external grants in support of his research and teaching, from agencies and organizations including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Dreyfus Foundation and the Arnold Beckman Foundation.
Lee serves on the editorial boards of "Medicinal Chemistry," "Drug Design Reviews Online" and "Heterocyclic Communications." He has co-authored more than 100 articles published in scientific journals, and has given more than 180 presentations and invited lectures at professional conferences.
While teaching at Furman, he has also served as an adjunct member of the chemistry faculty at Georgia State University since 2002, and has held visiting professorships at the National University of Singapore and the University of Guelph in Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Prior to joining the Furman faculty, he was a research scientist with Synphar Laboratories Inc. in Edmonton in Alberta, Canada.
Lee completed both his undergraduate work, in biochemistry, at the University of Guelph in 1983, and his doctorate, in organic chemistry, at the University of Guelph in 1986. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Alberta in Edmonton during 1986-87.
The Division of Natural Sciences at Hope includes the departments of biology, chemistry, computer science, geological and environmental sciences, mathematics, nursing, and physics and engineering, and has more than 50 faculty members.
The program in the sciences emphasizes collaborative faculty/student learning, and approximately 85 percent of the college's science and mathematics majors conduct research. Since 1990, more than 300 students have co-authored research publications with faculty.
Consistently through the years, Hope has held more grants through the National Science Foundation's "Research Experiences for Undergraduates" program than any other liberal arts college in the country and more than all but a handful of institutions of any type - including research universities - nationwide. The Research Corporation ranked Hope eighth out of 136 institutions in research publications per faculty member from 1991 to 2000. The division was recognized as a whole "Program That Works" and as a model for other institutions by Project Kaleidoscope in 1994.
Lee succeeds Dr. James Gentile, who is leaving the college to become president of Research Corporation of Tucson, Ariz., after serving as dean since 1988 and on the faculty since 1976.