SMC Department of Physical Sciences

Dr. Ethan B. Gallogly:  a.k.a. "Dr. Ethan"

Biography:  Dr. Ethan joined the SMC team in the Fall of 1999.  Ethan was born in a hospital in the Bronx and shares a birthday of 9/11 with approximately 1 out of every 365 Americans (Hey -- back then it was a good day!  The start of the TV season... ).  He grew up in Long Island and Connecticut and obtained a B.S. in Chemistry and Biology at the University of Connecticut in 1987.  Ethan moved to the West coast for graduate school at UC Davis and has made California his home ever since:

"...you can check out anytime you like, but you can never never leave!"

-The Eagles, Hotel California

At Davis Ethan completed a Ph.D. degree in Physical Chemistry under Professor William M. Jackson.  His doctoral thesis was on Crossed Molecular Beam studies of Buckminsterfullerene (C60); a complex project involving the design of a novel $200,000 crossed beam machine with a rotating source and quadrupole mass spectrometer detector.

While doing his Ph.D. research Ethan became interested in Asian literature and pursued 2 years of Chinese studies concurrent with his doctoral work.  During this time he lived with an overseas family from Qinghai China who are now his second "adopted" family!

Following his graduation from Davis in '93 Ethan went to Mainland China for 2 years and worked as a Foreign Expert at the Wuxi Institute of Light Industry and then at Southwest Jiaotong University in Sichuan.  There he taught English, Western Culture, Science, and Technology courses and became enamored of hot spicy Sichuan food!

Returning to America in 1995 Ethan worked as a part time Chemistry instructor at UC Davis, Sacramento City College, Ohlone College, and Cal State Hayward.

After a year of excellent teaching reviews he was hired full time as a 3-year lecturer and laboratory coordinator at UC Berkeley.  At Cal he developed a new laboratory program, authored two lab manuals, directed a small undergraduate research group studying estrogen mimics, hired and supervised a staff of some 50 TAs for the general chemistry program, and taught lecture sections of chemistry 1A and 1B (the SMC equivalent of chemistry 11 & 12).

In his spare time he also managed to pursue his interest in Asian languages auditing course in: Buddhism, Classical Chinese, and Modern Literature (all in Chinese).  He is currently learning Korean.  He was also a leader for the Sierra Club, the Cal Berkeley Hiking Club (CHAOS) and is an avid backpacker and occasional mountain climber...

"I am always glad to touch the living rock again, and dip my hand in high mountain air..."

    -John Muir

Following a successful career at Berkeley Ethan was hired onto the SMC faculty as an Associate Professor  in 1999 and has taught Chem 10, Chem 11, and Human Development 20 for Science Majors. In 2005 he became a full tenured professor at Santa Monica College.

Ethan has been dubbed "Dr. Demo" by some of his colleagues and has worked to establish a set of Chemical Education Lecture Demonstrations as a resource to the SMC teaching faculty.

He is also a department pioneer in the area of on-line assignments and has personally coded over 100 new on-line chemistry problems in Pearl Script using the web assign homework system.

In addition to his career, he has traveled extensively in Asia including: Mainland China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, and Korea!  In the summer of 2003 he completed a tour of Europe including: France, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands. 

"...one of the best parts of working at SMC is that the college encourages you to expand your horizons in many different directions.  All the knowledge that one gains in life is seen as complementary to one's teaching skills.  The bottom line is that SMC respects teaching, and that is why I'm here!"

He has been known to bike to work and completed the California AIDs ride from SF to LA in June 2000 -- helping to raise 11.25 million dollars for AIDs patients, research, outreach, and education.

He has worked as a co-faculty advisor to the campus chemistry club (come to the meetings Tu @ 11:15 in Sci 155) and worked with several highly-motivated SMC students to develop a working fuel cell, a clean alternative source of energy for the future! 

He recently returned from a semester in Chengdu China where he spent the majority of his time working on a new general chemistry college textbook in various tea-houses around the city. This is expected to be published in early 2010.

Ethan has been awarded an SMC sabbatical to perform research into fuel cells at Sichuan University in China and will be away during the Spring 2010 and Summer 2010 semesters.

If you drop in at Science 283, "Dr. Ethan" would be happy to discuss chemical education, fuel cells, share travel stories, swap Tang poems, discuss the best hotsprings to backpack to in California, or just have a game of "Go" (Badook) over some green tea...

Recent Talks:  Photography Demystified, better understanding through chemistry.
Given at SMC on March 23, See link to photo page!

Recent Conferences Attended: Biannual Conference on Chemical Education, 2000, Ann Arbor, MI. (with the kind support of Santa Monica College and the SMC dept. of Physical Sciences -- thank you!).