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WIGHT: |
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My
name is Chuck Wight and I'm a professor
at the chemistry department at the University
of Utah. |
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ASPIRE: |
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What
kind of science do you do? |
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WIGHT: |
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My
research involves two areas. One is
chemical reactions that occur at extremely
low temperatures near absolute zero
and the other part of my work has to
do with chemistry of high explosives. |
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ASPIRE: |
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What
makes your science important? |
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WIGHT: |
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There
are two main things that make it important.
One is that the main business that we
do here is to train young scientists
so people come here to graduate school
and they work in the lab and most of
my job is teaching them how to become
independent thinking scientists. The
other part that's important is that
we actually discover very fundamental
things about how chemistry works. About
how high explosives work in chemical
reactions and also how low reactions
in very low temperature work. |
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ASPIRE: |
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What
made you decide to go into the field
you study? |
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WIGHT: |
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Actually
I had a very good professor when I took
general chemistry in colleague. Before
that I thought about being an oceanographer
or perhaps becoming a doctor. This one
chemistry professor perhaps got me interested
in chemistry and got me into a research
lab and I really liked the work so I
decided to continue to become a professional
chemist. |
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ASPIRE: |
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What
kind of education did you have? |
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WIGHT: |
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I
got my Bachelors Degree in chemistry
at the University of Virginia and from
there I went to graduate school and
got my PhD in chemistry at the California
Institute of Technology and after that
I worked for about two and a half years
at the University of Colorado as a postdoctoral
research associate and then came here. |
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ASPIRE: |
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How
did you come to the U of U? |
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WIGHT: |
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I
applied for several jobs to be a chemistry
professor at several universities across
the countries and also to be a staff
scientist at a national laboratory and
I got a few offers and I decided to
take this one. |
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ASPIRE: |
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What
do you like most about your job? |
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WIGHT: |
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I
like being paid to be creative. Sometimes
I'll be in my office just working out
problems or mathematics or something
on the white board in my office and
sometimes I'll just stop and think "Wow,
they pay me to do this!" This is
great. |
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ASPIRE: |
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What
do you like least about your job? |
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WIGHT: |
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Meetings.
A certain amount of my job involves
meeting with other people to work out
policies and administrative decisions
and I really don't enjoy that very much. |
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ASPIRE: |
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What
hobbies do you have outside of science? |
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WIGHT: |
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I
am a long distance runner. I run marathons.
I think I've run about twenty six marathons
over the last dozen years or so and
I'm a private pilot. I own part of a
small plane and I like to fly around
the inter mountain west and I also like
backpacking. So I just came back the
other day (8/13/02) from a four day
trip in the wind river range in Wyoming. |
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ASPIRE: |
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What
advice would you give to an aspiring
scientist? |
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WIGHT: |
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I
advice to anyone that wants to become
a scientist to get a job in a laboratory
and see what the work is like because
often times the experience you get in
a science classroom is really not really
very reflective of the kinds of work
that you do in the laboratory. So I
would say go around and visit lots of
people in either academic laboratories
or perhaps in industries. Get a job
as a technician in a day laboratory
or environmental science laboratory,
something like that and just get involved
in the work and see if that's what you
really want to do. Often times you'll
find that it's really hard work and
a lot of the time it will be frustrating
but the rewards are really really great. |
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ASPIRE: |
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Alright,
thank you for your time. |
