 "Photo: Mitch Ramos / UCD Advocate")
For nearly 20 years at UC Denver, Dr. Douglas Dyckes has taught undergraduate and graduate students the complexities of organic chemistry.
Dyckes traveled a long, winding path before finally settling at UCD. He began his studies in chemistry as an undergraduate at Yale University, graduating in 1963. Before pursuing a doctoral degree in chemistry, he decided to study history—but not for long.
“Soon after,” he said, “I discovered that I was not cut out to be a historian.”
Dyckes joined the Peace Corps in 1964 and was sent to Nigeria, where he worked in a hospital and taught at the village school. Following his return to the U.S., he secured a job as a high school science teacher but decided again that it wasn’t for him.
“I quickly realized that high school was not the place I belonged. At that point, I sent out an application to graduate school and was accepted into Case Western, where I spent the next three years until I graduated with a Ph.D.,” he said.
After graduating, as Dyckes explains, he secured two post-doctoral research appointments: first at Cornell University, then at The Laboratory for Molecular Biology in Virginia.
He made it to UCD in 1990.
“After seeing an advertisement for a position as chair [of the chemistry department at UCD], I applied, was accepted, and now I’m here.”
According to Jordan Kortmeyer, who graduated with a Master’s degree in chemistry in 2003, “Just before I graduated, Dr. Dyckes and I sat down for lunch, and we went through my thesis page by page.
“I was actually very impressed. I didn’t think that the advisors cared that much for their student’s understanding of the material,” said Kortmeyer.
After all the years of teaching, Dyckes explained what he now expects of students.
“I want students to know that this is their education. It is their responsibility to learn from the resources provided to them,” he said. Dyckes views himself as a facilitator of the educational process, rather than purely as an instructor in the conventional sense.
When asked about retirement, Dyckes laughed. “I’ve just signed a five year contract with the university to scale down to teaching two classes each semester, then at the end of the contract, who knows what I’ll do then. It probably means that I’ll be back, teaching for a lot less.”
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