Dr. Laurence Lavelle co-authors two chemistry books and students enjoy his Chemistry Community

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Lavelle recently co-authored two solutions manuals, one for students and one for faculty, to accompany the “Chemical Principles” textbook.

The books contain over 1000 pages of detailed solutions to over 2,500 questions and are highly informative to both students and faculty. Through the books students learn by example, and faculty appreciate the solutions to their over 1200 questions as useful resources for exercises, tests and exams.

Lavelle has created multiple educational tools. His most recent is an online forum and database he called Chemistry Community which continues to break new records as students find it highly useful, engaging, and helpful through peer-to-peer learning and facilitated learning with students, teaching assistants, undergraduate assistants, and Lavelle all interacting online. During his ten week Winter 2017 Chem 14B classes Chemistry Community generated 14,143 posts and 725,952 page views.

A native of Ireland, Lavelle completed his B.Sc. (Chemistry major, and Microbiology and Physical Oceanography minors), B.Sc. (Honors, Chemistry), and M.Sc. (Distinction, Physical Chemistry) at the University of Cape Town (UCT). After graduating from UCT he accepted a faculty position in the Chemistry Department at the University of The Witwatersrand (WITS), South Africa. He then moved to the United States and his M.A. and Ph.D. are both in Molecular Biophysics from Princeton University. After one year as a post-doctorate at UCLA’s Molecular Biology Institute he joined the faculty in the department of Chemistry and Biochemistry where he currently, per year, teaches over two thousand enrolled students and supervises over fifty teaching assistants and undergraduate assistants.

He is the recipient of many research and teaching awards including the Sir Robert Kotze Award, the Harry Crossley Award, a CSIR Fellowship, Berlex Fellowship, Molecular Biophysics NIH Fellowship, the Herbert Newby McCoy Award for Innovative Research at UCLA, the Hanson-Dow Award for Teaching Excellence at UCLA, the UCLA AAP Faculty Recognition Award, and UCLA’s highest teaching award the University Distinguished Teaching Award.

Recent awards (2016-17) include Sigma Pi’s Professor of Empowerment Award (2016), UCLA Faculty Development Award (2016 and 2017), and a UCLA Office of Instructional Development, Mini-Grant Award (2016 and 2017). Photo above right: Lavelle with his 2015 Chem 14A/B nursing students with the thank you card they presented him at the end his last lecture with them.

Chem 14A and 14B are required for UCLA nursing students.

Lavelle has published in the areas of host-guest chemistry, the periodic table, DNA and RNA stability and structure, and virus stability and self-assembly. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Physical Society, the Biophysical Society, Sigma Xi, The Royal Society of Chemistry, and the American Federation of Teachers.

To learn more about Lavelle, visit his homepage.