Robin Garrell

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Whether Robin Garrell is teaching a beginning undergraduate course or an advanced graduate class, students can be sure their assumptions about chemistry will be challenged. Her style of teaching makes even the dreaded Thermodynamics, Kinetics, Organized Structures and Spectroscopy courses manageable.

Robin demolishes the chemistry fear factor and instills students with confidence and excitement about the subject. Students regularly thank her for helping them appreciate chemistry. Robin has introduced more distinctive courses and training programs than anyone else in the department’s history. The Introduction to Polymer Chemistry course she began teaching 11 years ago was the very first in UCLA’s curriculum. Most of the other top-10 chemistry departments in the nation still do not have such a course.

On Robin’s insistence, her classes include practical, as well as academic, components, leading the students from the basic chemistry and physics of polymers to the various industrial processes and material applications that put polymer chemistry to use. The breadth of Robin’s teaching makes her one of a kind. She is the 15th in her department and the first woman in any of the physical sciences to receive the Distinguished Award.