Dr. Paul McCord
paul@chembook.org

Associate Professor of Instruction
University of Texas at Austin
pmccord@utexas.edu

Dr. Paul McCord

Dr. McCord is a native of Abilene, Texas. He earned his B.S. in Chemistry from Abilene Christian University (ACU) in 1983. He continued at ACU to earn his M.S. in organic synthesis in 1985, after which he moved to Austin, TX. Dr. McCord recieved his Ph.D from the University of Texas in 1992 in the field of analytical chemistry under the mentorship of Dr. Allen Bard. After a short post-doc experience with Dr. Bard, Dr. McCord became a lecturer (Assistant Professor of Instruction) at UT in 1994. He was an Associate Professor of Instruction in the chemistry department. He retired from teaching May 2023.

Dr. McCord has taught mostly freshman level courses such as Principles of Chemistry I & II, and Introductory Chemistry (aka: Chemistry in Context) over the years. In addition to those courses, Dr. McCord has also taught Analytical Chemistry and Physical Chemistry. His primary teaching mission has been to educate UT freshman and prepare them for their journey into science related fields. Dr. McCord is a big supporter of lowering the cost of education by providing a no-cost chemistry textbook to UT students. He is currently working on his free eBook "chembook" which is a free book for non-science majors. He is also currently teaching the non-major chemistry classes at the university.


Dr. McCord's online chemistry book websites:

https://gchem.cm.utexas.edu is known as the "gchem" site which is a full chemistry textbook for freshman level chemistry for all science majors. This site was authored in calaboration with Dr. David Vanden Bout and Dr. Cynthia LaBrake. It has been active since 2012.


http://chembook.org is Dr. McCord's personal chemistry site (this site!) that he began in the summer of 2019. It was originally written for non-science majors at the University of Texas who were getting their required science credit. Dr. McCord is now working on the site as a personal project in his retirement from teaching.



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