This website is best viewed in a browser that supports web standards.

Skip to content or, if you would rather, Skip to navigation.

Northwest Missouri State University

  • myNorthwest

Top Ten Reasons to Study Chemistry at Northwest Missouri State University

  1. The Northwest Missouri State University is accredited by the American Chemical Society (ACS, the largest scientific organization in the world) and offers an ACS accredited Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry. This is the most comprehensive chemistry Bachelor’s degree that you can receive in the United States and is one of only three nationally accredited degrees offered at Northwest.
  2. Northwest has Ph.D. chemists in each of the five major fields of chemistry: Analytical, Biochemistry, Inorganic, Organic and Physical. Every lecture in the department is taught by a Ph.D. chemist.
  3. Students should look for small faculty-to-student ratios because of interaction with the professors, and most of our upper level chemistry courses seldom have more than ten students. Our major students are not numbers as they are often perceived as at larger schools.
  4. The recent 15 million dollar renovation of the Garrett-Strong Science and Math building in 2001 has provided the University with nine modern, full-time chemistry laboratories. Northwest is also currently building the Center of Excellence for Plant Biologics, where opportunities will arise for students to perform biochemical research.
  5. Most importantly, our graduates have 100% placement upon graduation since 1990! This is split between industry and graduate school. We have sent students to Notre Dame University, the Univeristy of Arizona, the university of Nebraska at Lincoln, the University of Georgia, Iowa State University, the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Missouri at Kansas City School of Pharmacy, the University of Maine, the University of Iowa, and the University of Kansas. Recent graduates that did not immediately pursue a graduate degree after graduation secured jobs as law enforcement forensic chemists, quality control managers, laboratory technicians, middle and secondary school teachers, brew masters, and clinical chemists.
  6. Multiple opportunities exist for Northwest chemistry students to secure internships or conduct research here on campus after their second year, typically during summers.
  7. Every chemistry student at Northwest has the opportunity to use every instrument that we have, such as HPLC, UV-Vis, IR, GC-MS, AA, fluorimetry and NMR. We do not reserve any strictly for faculty research and students use them in laboratory classes. Northwest received a donation from the Mary Marie Smith estate in 2005 to purchase new instrumentation. See modern our instrumentation here.
  8. Student organizations in Chemistry include the Student Affiliate American Chemical Society (SAACS) and the first nationally recognized chapter of the Gamma Sigma Epsilon National Chemistry Honor Society in the state of Missouri.
  9. Northwest has on-line access to all American Chemical Society journals back to their inception (1879 for the Journal of the American Chemical Society!), 35 in total.
  10. Any student who lives on campus in the dorms, apartments or suites receives a laptop computer.