UAH College of Science receives $2M to fulfill chemistry initiatives

The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) College of Science has received a $2 million gift from the William Henry McMullen III Trust to fund three initiatives in the Department of Chemistry.

Barbara Wadsworth, McMullen’s daughter, selected UAH for the donation to honor the memory of her father, an analytical chemist. UAH is a part of the University of Alabama System. 

“It was auspicious that we had come up with this at the same time that UAH had just started to  develop the Ph.D. in chemistry,” Wadsworth says. “That was the deciding factor on my part  because then it would make a difference.”

The first of the three initiatives, the William Henry McMullen III Distinguished Graduate  Fellowship, aims to attract and retain exceptional chemistry students as well as internationally  recognized chemistry researchers.  

UAH President Dr. Charles Karr believes that acquiring outstanding graduate students to  invigorate and attract faculty members is essential in the initial phase of building the Ph.D.  program. 

“Barbara Wadsworth’s remarkable generosity will allow us to jump-start an area of great need at UAH, namely an increase in the production of Ph.D. graduates,” Karr says. 

The fellowship will be created with a $1 million endowment. The Department of Chemistry will  nominate current and prospective UAH students for this award of $40,000 to cover tuition, single coverage health insurance and a stipend for the academic year.

The other two initiatives will support the laboratories that are vital to the work of these students and faculty members. 

The William Henry McMullen III Laboratories Fund, an endowment of $750,000, will maintain  and replace instrumentation in UAH’s chemistry laboratories, ensuring continued access to state-of-the-art equipment for faculty and students. 

The William Henry McMullen III Chemistry Teaching Laboratory will be funded with $250,000. Located in the Shelby Center for Science and Technology, this space is home to the laboratory components of the department’s introduction to chemistry course as well as some general  chemistry labs.  

McMullen passed away in 2006 at the age of 81 in Raleigh, N.C., where he had worked with  Pfizer for much of his career. He also played a role in the creation of high fructose corn syrup.

“He worked for a company at the time called Novo Industri AS, now Novo Nordisk AS, from  Denmark,” Wadsworth says. “They made enzymes. The Cuban crisis was going on, which  made sugar so expensive. He designed a batch system that took the most available starch,  which at the time was corn, and added enzymes to it, and it made fructose. It allowed them to  industrially substitute it for sugar.” 

McMullen was a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and a member of one of that city’s founding families.  After serving in the U.S. Army in World War II, he returned to New York to study chemistry and  start a family, which, along with Wadsworth, included daughter Margaret McMullen and son  Richard McMullen. 

Wadsworth came to Huntsville after her husband, E.J. “Butch” Wadsworth, a Birmingham  native, went to work for Boeing as a defense contractor. She worked as a retail store manager  and training store manager with the furniture company This End Up for 19 years. After that store closed, she worked for the Bombay Company. 

Wadsworth said she wanted her father and his passion for chemistry to be remembered and to  be shared with others. 

“He loved being in the lab,” she says. “Of course, you have to have the ability to interface with others and you have to grow in your business, so he couldn’t stay in the lab. But he would have  stayed there for the rest of his life if he could have.” 

She recalled her father taking his grandsons to his lab. 

“He taught them chemical experiments that completely overwhelmed them. He’d turn water blue or he’d make something smoke or he’d freeze something and it would break. He really enjoyed making an impression on young people,” reflected Wadsworth.

This is a contributing post from UAH’s newsroom. For more information, please visit www.uah.edu/news.