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William J. BaronDirector, Undergraduate Studies and Senior Academic Professional Office: Boggs 1-108 Phone: 404-385-2808 Fax: 404-894-4066
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B.S., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1968; Ph.D., Princeton University, 1972; Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow, Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany, 1972-1973; Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia University, 1973-1974
Responsibilities
Bill brings to our department almost 30 years of managerial R&D experience in Bell Labs (AT&T and Lucent Technologies). Bill is the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Bill’s responsibilities include co-chairing the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, providing administrative supervision and support for the freshmen chemistry program and upper level lab coordinators (Analytical, Organic, Physical, and Biochemistry labs); overseeing undergraduate advisement; and being the primary liaison with chemistry and biochemistry undergraduates and other GT academic units and programs. His leadership skills have been used to (1) supervise and mentor the Academic Professionals in the department, (2) coordinate scheduling of all courses taught in our department, (3) teach numerous undergraduate lectures, (4) serve as a liaison between the Academic Professionals and Academic Faculty, (5) offer academic advisement to undergraduate chemistry majors, (6) conduct course transfer equivalency analysis, (7) lead FASET and Connect with Tech responsibilities for the department, (8) coordinate undergraduate teaching assistant training and assessment, (9) chair the institute wide committee on Chemical and Environmental Safety and (10) serve as College of Science safety officer.
Teaching Interests
Bill has taught multiple sections of General Chemistry (CHEM 1310), Survey of Organic Chemistry (CHEM 1315), Organic Chemistry I (CHEM 2311) and Organic Chemistry II (CHEM 2312). With freshmen chemistry being the largest lectures taught in the department, he and other faculty who are devoted to freshmen chemistry implemented the use of the Personal Response System (PRS), an advancement that has become very popular among students on campus. Bill has also led the development of curriculum standards for freshmen chemistry to encourage consistency in the content covered among faculty who teach this course. More recently Bill led the faculty teams that redesigned the freshmen chemistry program to provide the new courses Chemical Principles I (CHEM 1211K) and Chemical Principles II (CHEM 1212K) for more chemically intensive majors and redesigned General Chemistry (CHEM 1310) to be directed towards the large engineering population at Georgia Tech.
Scholarship
Bill has provided leadership to the freshmen chemistry faculty committee that oversees the textbook and technology utilized in freshmen chemistry courses. Recent changes have included the adoption of a new textbooks and integrated technology customized for GT courses and students. The adoption of web-based technology across the entire freshmen chemistry program for tutorial assignments, in-lecture quizzes and post-lecture assignments has facilitated the standardized of the curriculum across the large freshmen chemistry program. Bill primarily teaches organic chemistry and absolutely loves providing students with the platform and support to help them really learn organic reactions and mechanisms.