Graduate students in the Chemistry Department take the intensity of their lives for granted. While undergraduates enjoy three long months of summer vacation, their graduate counterparts say they are lucky if they can escape the lab for two weeks.

But sometimes intensity can be too much, and over the past year the Chemistry Department has implemented a ninepoint plan to improve the quality of life for overworked chemistry students.

The process began last summer, when simmering problems with the Chemistry Department's advising system came to head. Jason D. Altom, a fifth-year graduate student, committed suicide last August and blamed the department for failing to provide him with adequate support.

In the wake of Altom's death, Weld Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology James G. Anderson began improving advising and other services for chemistry graduate students.

Now, one year later, members of the department say that the changes have been successfully implemented and, for the most part, have had a wonderful effect on the students.

"A lot of people here feel the administration is doing a good job to turn things around and make it a more pleasant place," says Laurie Deiner, a second-year graduate student. "You certainly feel cared about and that your problems will be addressed."

Forging Bonds

According to Anderson, the changes to the Chemistry Department can be broken down into two categories, both aimed to improve relations between professors and students.

The department has improved both the advising structure and the physical structure of the Mallinckrodt Laboratory, the hub of chemistry at Harvard, to make them more conducive to communication and camaraderie.

Some of the major changes include lectures on alternative careers in chemistry, confidential off-campus psychiatric help, and social events that help bring together the different research groups within the department.

In addition to these changes, one specific problem that Altom mentioned in his suicide note is on its way to be remedied. Until this year, graduate students had one adviser with whom they worked closely from their first year until the completion of a thesis.

Now students can form a pre-thesis committee comprised of their adviser and two other Faculty members.

"A lot of what we've been trying to do is increase communication between the students and the Faculty," says Krista A. Beaver, a third-year graduate student who is also the co-chair of the Chemistry Department's Quality of Life Committee. "New committees do that."

A physical overhaul is planned as well. The lobby of Mallinckrodt Laboratory will be renovated in order to make the building more user-friendly.

"The lobby will contain the offices of the chair of the department, the lab director, and support for students," Anderson says. "It establishes a human face of the department to anyone who comes in."