NSME new faculty: Rachel Oldfield

Department of Chemistry

By California State University, Bakersfield

August 23^rd, 2021

A CSUB alumna who was chosen as the 2016 Outstanding Graduate for chemistry, Rachel Oldfield returns to the university as a full-time lecturer. The Bakersfield native went on to earn her master’s degree in chemistry from UC Santa Cruz before joining the CSUB faculty part-time in 2019.

Trained as a biochemist, Oldfield is interested in researching protein structure and function. As an undergraduate student, she conducted research on an enzyme called lysyl oxidase with Dr. Karlo Lopez, publishing a paper on her work and winning several awards. While in graduate school, she studied another protein, the agouti-related peptide, which she explained is a signaling peptide that is found in the brain that leads to positive-feeding behavior.

Oldfield is excited to start the 2021-2022 academic year and proud to be part of the CSUB chemistry and biochemistry department.

"While teaching classes in graduate school, I would often look back and think about how grateful I am for all of my instructors at CSUB for giving me the foundation I needed to be capable of teaching classes of up to 400 students with confidence," she said. "I now feel entirely humbled and honored to be working alongside the same set of instructors that taught me when I was an undergraduate student in chemistry. It is truly a privilege to have the responsibility of educating young minds in a professional atmosphere, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to make chemistry accessible to all of my students."

In addition to a foundational laboratory course, Oldfield will also teach an advanced biochemistry laboratory, which encompasses a research project not unlike what students might complete in future master’s programs.

“This course is critical for my biochemistry majors to get hands-on experience in the laboratory as well as using their critical thinking and writing skills,” she said. “At the end of the semester, the students are asked to write an entire research paper, just like a real publication, taking into account all of the results from the semester and tying it into the common objective of the experiment.”

Oldfield and her husband are recently married, and the couple has two Dachshunds, Rex and Bella. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her family, doing arts and crafts, practicing yoga and riding her bike.