Purpose: The American Chemical Society’s Division of Organic Chemistry is pleased to sponsor a new award program called the Undergraduate Award in Organic Chemistry, that is intended to recognize senior students who display a significant aptitude for organic chemistry and to encourage further interest in the field.

The award: Consists of a letter of recognition from the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry and an award certificate signed by the division chair. Also, please be aware that we hope to provide a one year free membership to the Organic Division for all the awardees. However, at this time (since this is the inaugural year for this award), we are just now working out some of details on this benefit, and we will have more information later.

Nominations: Chemistry departments are invited to select a top graduating senior student majoring in either chemistry or biochemistry who has demonstrated excellence in organic chemistry based on a combination of research experience, coursework and a desire to pursue a career in chemistry. The student should also be enrolled at your institution for the 2012-2013 academic year. To nominate a student, the Department Chair or the Chair of the Department Awards Committee (or similar), should complete the online form. While the due date has passed for the 2013 ACS Division of Organic Chemistry Undergraduate Award Nominations and certificates and letters have been sent to all the nominators for distribution, we anticipate that nominations for the 2014 award will open in February and will close no earlier than March 15th, 2014. Please watch this page for updates. Please note that only one student per U.S. institution can be nominated per academic year. While we plan to send you the official award items by April 30th, once the form is submitted, you are welcome to immediately recognize the student as you deem appropriate.

Past awardees: The list of the 180 Inaugural Organic Division Undergraduate Awardees is available here. Each awardee has been sent a certificate (personally signed by the Organic Division Chair, Professor Lawrence T. Scott) and a letter detailing how they can obtain free membership in the division. These items were sent to the nominator for distibution to the student.

Please note that the ACS Organic Division's Undergraduate Award is different from the longer running Undergraduate Organic Chemistry Award provided by the POLYED center, which is an award desginated for outstanding performance by an undergraduate chemistry major in the two-semester organic sequence. Visit the POLYED Awards page to nominate a student for that award.