Dr. Kara Stowers has a unique hobby: setting goals for herself.
This hobby has led her to become a professor in the BYU Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry starting this fall. She is looking forward to the challenges and opportunities of her new faculty position, as well as setting new goals to go along with them.
“It’s a unique opportunity when you can come to a new place and feel so welcome,” Stowers said. “The idea of coming into a department that felt so cohesive and felt so collaborative was really very unique and very exciting to me—that I would have not only motivated students but also very supportive colleagues.”
Stowers received her double undergrad degree in chemistry and chemical engineering from the University of Utah in May of 2006 and went on to attend the University of Michigan and receive her PhD in chemistry in January of 2012.
During her time in school, Stowers researched the different aspects of palladium catalysis for small molecule synthesis. As she continued to work with the catalysts, she grew more and more curious about catalyst design and efficiency. Now she plans to research homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis during her time here at BYU.
“Catalysis researchers are usually very divided into heterogeneous and homogeneous [areas of study],” Stowers said. “A lot of processes start off as homogeneous because you can characterize and understand them so well, but after the process is over, it can be very difficult to separate the mixtures. I want to be able to understand both the homo- and heterogeneous sides of this field.”
Stowers cemented the idea for her research while working on her postdoc at Harvard. During her research, she was exposed to new ways of studying the catalysis process that she hadn’t before.
“I think my postdoc was really good for me, because it taught me that it is okay to feel like you do not know anything,” Stowers said. “It was really nice to see that the skills that you learn for chemistry and from graduate school—hard work, self teaching, and figuring out how to solve a problem—are very translatable to other fields.”
Stowers decided to teach because she likes working with people and because she enjoys teaching students about chemistry and life.
“I love working with people and motivating them to figure out what they want to do,” Stowers said. “It’s a really nice thing to be able to help people figure out what their skill set is and what their dreams are.”