Tessenderlo Kerley Donates Lab Equipment to High School and University

Team members at Phoenix Innovation Center Identified educators in need of glassware and instruments

PHOENIX, ARIZONA, January 11, 2022 – Students at one Arizona high school are back in the chemistry learning game thanks to an analytical balance and other lab equipment donated by Tessenderlo Kerley, Inc.

The Phoenix Innovation Center gifted the analytical balance – a highly-sensitive lab instrument designed to accurately measure mass – to Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona. 

Jorge Franco, a Tessenderlo Kerley chemist, attended Dobson. He was recently informed that his old school’s analytical balance had broken a few years ago and was never replaced. Raymond Hayes, who has been teaching chemistry and science at Dobson since 2002, accepted the gift.

“Mr. Hayes was ecstatic with the donation,” said Franco. “He was my teacher for College Prep Chemistry my sophomore year and for AP Chemistry my senior year.  My experience in those classes helped guide and encourage me toward studying chemistry in college and toward my career in chemistry.”

Speaking of college chemistry, Tessenderlo Kerley also made a recent donation to the University of Arizona. Glassware and HPLC columns were given to Dr. Yeon Sun Lee, a Professor of Pharmacology, and Dr. Scott Cowell, a Professor of Environmental Science.

HPLC stands for “High-performance Liquid Chromatography.” It’s an analytical technique to separate, identify and quantify components in a mixture. Most laboratories around the world consider them to be essential.

Tessenderlo Kerley Senior Research Chemist Sun Wallace and Chemist Crystal Arias helped facilitate the donation to the university.

“These items came to us at a good point in our lab because we are expanding our research into drug development in pain and pain management,” said Lee. “We are planning to use glassware in the development of drug ligands to explore novel approaches to pain. We will use the analytical HPLC columns to judge the purification of our compounds as well as preliminary data of the hydrophobicity of the drugs.”

Paul Moran, Research and Development Manager for Tessenderlo Kerley, said the items donated to Dobson High and the University of Arizona were no longer useful to his staff at the Innovation Center, but will be very valuable to students considering a career in chemistry.

“During our re-organization at the Innovation Center we realized we had excess materials and equipment that we will not be using,” Moran explained. “Jorge and Sun knew of educators who were in need and it made sense to pass these things along to benefit young people and the teachers and educators who work with them. It’s Tessenderlo Kerley’s way of fostering future chemists.”