A retired chemist and former University of Toledo dean who had a role in elevating drinking water standards worldwide is being honored by UT on Thursday with a new laboratory named in her honor.
Nina McClelland, 90, who split her time growing up between Toledo and Gibsonburg and now lives in Sylvania Township, spent 30 years of her career in the private sector with Ann Arbor-based NSF International, an independent, accredited organization that helps regulators in the United States and 58 other countries develop science-based public health standards for manufacturers and other industries, such as water-treatment and sewage-treatment plants.
As a former NSF chairman, president, and chief executive officer, she helped guide NSF through many of its growth years. Created in 1944 as the National Sanitation Foundation, its name was changed to NSF International in 1990, as it expanded its services beyond sanitation and into global markets.
“She was a key driver that changed NSF International from a small food-handling equipment and water quality independent and testing organization into one of the world’s major players in a whole range of environmental and health protection areas,” said longtime friend Joe Cotruvo, a Toledo native who was the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s first water division chief after the agency began operations on Dec. 2, 1970. Mr. Cotruvo, now a Washington-based water consultant and a U.S. representative on a World Health Organization water quality committee, told The Blade he plans to be at UT for the event.
Ms. McClelland spent years at UT, beginning as an adjunct chemistry professor in 2003 and retiring in 2011 as dean of the university’s college of arts and sciences. She also worked in the provost’s office.
She is a former board chair of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific organization. She has served on several major committees, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology within the U.S. Department of Commerce; the National Drinking Water Advisory Council within the U.S. EPA, and the Committee on Water Treatment Chemicals that’s part of the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council.
Ms. McClelland earned her bachelor and master of science degrees from UT in 1951 and 1963, respectively, then earned her doctoral degree in environmental chemistry from the University of Michigan in 1968. UT awarded her an honorary doctorate in science in 2003.
In an interview with The Blade, she seemed anything but a retired academic willing to slow down.
“I’ve ‘retired’ six times. That’s the only thing in my career that I’ve failed at,” Ms. McClelland said, inflecting some of her humor.
She said she got her high school diploma at Gibsonburg High School, growing up in modest surroundings while splitting her time between Toledo and Gibsonburg beginning in eighth grade. Her grandparents and an aunt who was a mathematician helped raise her, she said.
At Gibsonburg High, she was chosen as the girl most likely to succeed by her graduating class.
Ms. McClelland started out as a math major but switched to chemistry. She said she originally had thoughts of studying to become a doctor, but soon realized she was too sensitive around people experiencing pain and other ailments.
At one point, she was chief chemist of Toledo’s wastewater treatment plant — Ohio’s first woman licensed to operate one, she said.
She said water quality is “one of the most interesting and most essential sciences out there.”
“It’s scarce and it’s only going to get scarcer,” Ms. McClelland said. “When it comes to drinking water, it's just so important and people take it for granted.”
Mr. Cotruvo said she always has been “a strong leader expecting the best from anyone who was engaging with her.”
“She has always been a formidable leader in whatever role that she had, be it business, professional, or university,” he said. “I have known her for more than 40 years and she is the same, tireless person striving for excellence as she has always been.”
UT President Sharon Gaber said the university is proud to recognize Ms. McClelland’s contributions to science, and said the new lab “will benefit our scientists and students in their search for solutions to protect public health and the environment.”
The facility will be called the Dr. Nina McClelland Laboratory for Water Chemistry and Environmental Analysis.
The dedication ceremony is at 3:30 p.m. at Bowman-Oddy Laboratories, Room 2059, on UT’s main campus.
First Published September 18, 2019, 9:44 p.m.
