Caleb Tatebe

I was born and raised in the greater Youngstown, Ohio area; I grew up in a Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) church that gave me an incredible foundation of faith and insight into the mystery of God. I enrolled at Youngstown State University to study engineering. While my Star Trek-fueled dreams of NASA faded a bit, I had the chance to participate in an undergraduate research experience that started to pique my interest in chemistry. I continued with the research and eventually changed my major and finished my B.Sc. in 2012. I was unsure about my career goals, so I stayed in Youngstown to study chemistry further. After a few months into my M.Sc. studies, I knew that I wanted to take research more seriously and set my eyes on graduate school beyond the terminal degree. Around the same time, I felt called to mentor people in the 18-29 age group. This came out of my own time of growing in my own faith and it was no surprise as I had been teaching undergraduate lab sections, working as a resident assistant (RA), and trying to be a better brother to my younger siblings. The idea that I could help people to learn from my experience was what launched me into a pursuit of a PhD in chemistry. The next chapter of my life meant I would take recently-married wife to Indiana, where I was accepted into Purdue University's graduate program. The time we spent away from our families, but together, was very crucial in developing who I am today! Not many people have the chance to say that they have worked with uranium, but I got to study uranium's role in fundamental organometallic reactions closely while working in Suzanne Bart's research group. In 2019, I finished the part of my life as a student with my PhD in chemistry and moved my family (now with two sons!) back to northeast Ohio. I spent the next two years as a post-doc at YSU learning about metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with Professor Doug Genna. This time was invaluable in reinforcing my mentorship, guidance, and teaching philosophies. I joined the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Presbyterian College for the Fall 2021 semester as an Assistant Professor. I am excited to see how I can integrate into the campus community to improve the culture and area!

My Life

My hobbies

Reading, exploring new places, video games, listening to music

Fantasy dinner guests

Arsène Wenger, Satoru Iwata, Kurt Vonnegut

My undergrad alma mater

Youngstown State University

If I weren't a professor, I would

be working in baseball or soccer (I was a batboy in high school!)

Favorite books

"Player Piano" - Kurt Vonnegut; "The Three Musketeers" - Alexandre Dumas; "Silence" - Shusaku Endo; "Blue Like Jazz" - Donald Miller; "Anna Karenina" - Leo Tolstoy; "Fever Pitch" - Nick Hornby

Favorite movies

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country; Star Trek: First Contact;

Favorite city

Youngstown, Ohio

Favorite coffee

Tea

Nobody knows I

hold a vast amount of useless trivial information in my brain

Current Research

Expanding the knowledge of metal organic frameworks (MOFs) that use redox-active ligands