Faculty

Home ยป Faculty

Jennifer
Schwartz Poehlmann

Education: 
 B.A. (Chemistry) 2002, Washington University in St. Louis; Ph.D. 2008, Stanford University

Courses Taught: Chemistry 31A and B, 33, 
Awards: 
2012 Humanities & Sciences Dean's Award for Achievements in Teaching
Phone: 
650-723-9326
Email: 
jks425@stanford.edu

Principal Research Interests

A well-prepared and enthusiastic teacher has the ability to inspire and motivate student learning, however excellent teaching requires training, feedback, reflection, and support. Therefore one of my major interests is to continue developing and maintain an effective Teaching Assistant training program for the graduate and undergraduate TA’s within our department. I am also working in conjunction with the Center for Teaching and Learning to expand support for new TAs and improve professional development opportunities for our advanced TAs through creation of the Mentors in Teaching (MinT) Program. MinT currently provides training and resources to Teaching Mentors from over 15 departments on campus. Both programs encourage TAs to learn useful ways to gain feedback from their students, reflect on the effectiveness of their teaching, and discuss successful teaching methods that more actively engage students in the classroom.
 
I have also been heavily involved in the development of hands-on guided inquiry small group activities that have been incorporated into the discussion sections of Stanford’s two quarter general chemistry sequence, Chem31A/B. We are now working to bring similar experiences into local high schools by designing a set of exciting guided inquiry lab experiences that reinforce and compliment the chemistry concepts in the California State curriculum. Our graduate students will then take these activities out to the high schools to provide hundreds of local students the opportunity to work with enthusiastic young scientists while getting hands on experience with chemistry. Our goals are to educate high school students about how chemistry relates to the ‘real world’ and promote excitement and an appreciation for both science and higher education.Click here to learn more about the “Motivating Future Scientists Chemistry Outreach” Program.
 
Additionally, I am continuing studies on several binuclear non-heme iron enzymes including ferritins, methane monooxygenase, and Δ9 desaturase in conjunction with the Solomon Group. Binuclear non-heme iron enzymes catalyze a diverse range of reactions involving the activation of dioxygen at a largely conserved diiron active site. We use a combination of Density Functional Theory and Circular Dichroism /Magnetic Circular Dichroism spectroscopies to characterize the geometric and electronic structure of the resting and reactive forms of these proteins to better understand what features are required for dioxygen reactivity.

Representative Publications

1) “Evolving Roles for Teaching Assistants in Introductory Courses,” Dunbar, R.W.; Egger, A; Schwartz, J.K., Eos Trans. AGU Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract ED41B-07 (2008).

2) “CD and MCD Studies of the Effects of Component B Variant Binding on the Biferrous Active Site of Methane Monooxygenase,” Mitic, N.; Schwartz, J. K.; Brazeau, B. J.; Lipscomb, J. D.; Solomon, E. I., Biochemistry, 47(32), 8386-8397 (2008).

3) “Spectroscopic Definition of the Ferroxidase Site in M Ferritin: Comparison of Binuclear Substrate vs Cofactor Active Sites,” Schwartz, J. K.; Liu, X. S.; Tosha, T.; Theil, E. C.; Solomon, E. I., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 130(29), 9441-9450 (2008).

4) “Geometric and Electronic Structure Studies of the Binuclear nonheme Ferrous Active Site of Toluene-4-monooxygenase: Parallels with Methane monooxygenase and Insight into the Role of the Effector Proteins in O2 Activation,” Schwartz, J. K., Wei, P.-P.; Mitchell, K. H.; Fox, B. G.; Solomon, E. I., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 130(22), 7098-7109 (2008). 

5) “Strategies for Teaching Assistant training and support during implementation of Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) in recitation sections for a large general chemistry lecture course,” Schwartz, J.; Zuleta, I.; Dunbar, R. W.; Scharberg, M. A.; Chidsey, C., American Chemical Society 231st National Meeting & Exposition, Atlanta GA; (March, 2006).