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On Curiosity and Chemistry

Portland Magazine

Alumni

January 21, 2021

Kara BreuerOn a crab processor boat, in 1988, in the middle of a storm off the coast of Alaska, Kara Breuer ’95, MAT ’06 made a promise that if she survived, she’d go to college. It took the crew about 17 hours to make it home.

On that boat, that night, she says, “I made my peace with God,” and she eventually made good on her promise.

A native of Ketchikan, Alaska, Kara grew up in the logging and fishing industries. In the crab industry, she operated the onboard hydraulic lift to drop a 200-pound cage of packed crab legs into boiling water. Next the meat would need to be frozen in a super-saturated salt solution and Freon gas. If she got the salinity and Freon balance wrong, it could cost the company $2 million. As time went on, she wanted to understand how the chemistry of that Freon actually worked. And so the crabbing industry led Kara to chemistry and to UP.

She had some prerequisites to catch up on ahead of time—she’d stopped school in seventh grade to go to work—but she relished being a student at a liberal arts school. “It changed my whole life,” she says. With the mentorship of chemistry professor Ray Bard, and her advisor, Sr. Sandra Lincoln, Kara decided to become a teacher.

Kara now teaches organic chemistry labs at UP and assists with UP’s archeological and scientific research in Mallorca. She also teaches AP chemistry and biomedical sciences at Ridgefield High School. She finds remote learning to be a challenge, mainly because it’s hard to build relationships, but, she says, “I try to make it entertaining.”