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Project SEED scholar Marc McKithen From one bench to the next, Chief Judge Marc McKithen reflects on his career in chemistry and law ARMINDA DOWNEY-MAVROMATIS, C&EN WASHINGTON
chemist turned lawyer, Marc A. McKithen says his training in chemistry is never far from his mind in his current position as chief judge at Trenton Municipal Court in New Jersey. Practicing law and practicing chemistry, he explains, follow similar steps. You identify a problem, “then you have to do some research and figure out what has been done before or what’s the current state of the law or current state of the science.” After completing a literature review, lawyers and chemists both create a hypothesis and a plan of action. From there, they deviate. Lawyers build a case, and chemists generate data. But none of the previous steps are effective if you can’t communicate your results. “One of the reasons I probably didn’t go into law earlier,” McKithen says, “is because I was always saying, ‘Well, I’m good at math. I’m not the best writer.’ ” In fact, it was chemistry, not a humanities course, that led McKithen to see the power of communication. “I realized you can’t be a successful chemist if you can’t write or explain what you’ve done.” Today, McKithen presides over minor, municipal offenses like health code violations and drug possession. While major crimes like theft and assault are filed within a municipal court room, they are transferred out to the superior court. McKithen became involved in chemistry after his junior year at Trenton Central High School. A high school instructor, Deborah McBride, introduced him to the ACS Project SEED program. McKithen met with John Sheats, a longtime chemistry professor at nearby Rider University. Sheats had restarted Rider’s involvement in Project SEED. His lab was,
C R E D I T: COU RTESY O F M A RC MC KI T H E N
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at the time, focused on inorganic chemistry. All the Project SEED students in Sheats’s lab, McKithen remembers, were from his high school. McKithen worked on “making organic metallic dyes” within Sheats’s laboratory. While he was unable to complete the entire summer, the experience ▸ Hometown: Trenton, N.J. changed the course of his col▸ Year in Project SEED: 1991 lege career. His connection to ▸ Education: B.S., chemistry, Rider University; M.S., the program spanned into his chemistry, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; J.D., adult life. He donated $1,000 Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law to another Rider University Project SEED mentor, allowing ▸ Current position: Chief judge, Trenton Municipal Court ▸ Why McKithen loves the program: Project SEED her to start a chapter of the impacts kids throughout their entire lives. program at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. chemistry plus a law degree made me After graduating from high school in more competitive,” he says. “I was really 1992, McKithen enrolled at Rider Universitrying to help kind of bridge the gap bety. Rider was about 8 km from McKithen’s tween chemistry and law.” high school, and he was at first hesitant McKithen was heavily involved in the to stay so close to home. Familiarity and American Chemical Society until around finances won out. McKithen already knew 2009, he says. He served on several comthe campus and the professors. On top of mittees and the Chemistry & the Law that, he was awarded a full-tuition scholarDivision. He credits his regular attendance ship from the university. His place on the of ACS national meetings for making convarsity track team secured him funding for nections and maintaining his chemistry room and board. knowledge. Friends made at the national While attending Rider, McKithen conmeetings still invite him out to dinner, tinued to work in Sheats’s lab alongside though his current position as a municipal Project SEED students. After receiving his B.S. in chemistry from the university, McK- court chief judge isn’t quite as chemically ithen began a Ph.D. program at the Univer- involved. An ACS meeting even introduced McKithen, then an undergraduate, to the sity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. man who would later become his graduate He switched his lab coat for a briefcase adviser. in 1998 and left UNC Chapel Hill with a “Sheats would say that I attended the master’s in chemistry. He moved to New meeting by myself, but I was with other York City to begin law school at Benjamin students, and came back with an internN. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva Uniship that ended up getting me into graduversity and earned his J.D. in 2001. McKithen is quick to note that his move ate school.” Connections and continuing education, into law was not a rejection of chemistry. he says, are the tangible benefits of the When he was an attorney, many of his Project SEED program. The program has a clients were pharmaceutical companies. ripple effect, giving participants an awareMcKithen has represented AstraZeneca, ness of and appreciation for science that Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Merck. “The they carry with them for life. ◾ fact that I had an advanced degree in
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JULY 23, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN
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