For 22 years, Chemistry Professor Mildred “Midge” Hall has been enhancing the lives of students at Clark State Community College; but at the end of spring semester this year, she will exchange her test tubes and Bunsen burners for airline tickets and adventures.

Hall holds a Doctorate of Arts in chemistry from Middle Tennessee State University and has an affinity for travel and world cultures. She will begin her retirement adventures with a trip to Italy followed by a folk-dance workshop and tour in Romania.

While she said she will miss attending conferences with coworkers, Hall’s post-Clark State plans include travel, travel and more travel with a little time set aside for knitting and gardening. “I will also help my daughter move to Milwaukee for her new job and visit family in Virginia Beach,” she said.

Hall said her most fond memories of chemistry lab come from student research activities she coordinated for several years. “Each Spring, my General Chemistry III students would carry out field research on water quality, which involved collecting water samples from creeks, natural wetlands and constructed wetlands,” she said. “Back in the lab, the students would carry out about ten different analyses on the various samples and use the results, along with observations made at the collection sites, to make a judgment concerning the water quality of the sites.”

Hall said each project resulted in a lengthy report produced by the students working together, and each year the class celebrated “the end of a year of chemistry and a term of water quality testing” with a canoe trip down the Little Miami River.

Hall hopes her students have learned how to apply basic chemical and mathematical knowledge to solve problems; how to apply basic knowledge to ask questions; and “to appreciate the amazing universe, from very small to the infinite.”