Dr. Keiter completed his undergraduate work at Shepherd College in 1961 with a B.S. in chemistry. His undergraduate experience was enhanced by two summer internships at Ruberoid Corporation. He earned his M.S degree in inorganic chemistry from West Virginia University in 1964 and his Ph.D. (with Samuel Grim) at the University of Maryland in 1967. This was followed by two years of post-doctoral research at Iowa State University (with John Verkade) that included one year of teaching general chemistry (with Bill Hutton). In 1969 Dr. Keiter joined the faculty at Eastern Illinois University, was named Professor of Chemistry in 1979, and Distinguished Professor in 1988, and Professor Emeritus in 2007. He has served as Visiting Professor of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin during the summers of 1972 and 1977 (with Bassam Shakhashiri), the University of Exeter (England) in 1975 (with Edward Abel), the University of Illinois in 1980-81 (with John Shapley), at Colorado State University in 1990 (with Jack Norton) and the University of Washington (2003).  He taught senior inorganic chemistry while at the University of Illinois. In 1998, Dr. Keiter received the Lawrence A. Ringenberg Award at Eastern Illinois University, the highest Award presented by the College of Sciences to recognize impact of achievements. In 1992 and again in 1998 he was the recipient of a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Scholar/Fellow Award. For nine years he served as a Councilor of the Council on Undergraduate Research where he was editor of the Inorganic Series an associate editor of the 1990 Research in Chemistry at Undergraduate Institutions. From 1992-1997 he served on the Petroleum Research Fund Advisory Board where he chaired the inorganic committee for non-Ph.D. schools and was a member of the Advisory Board policy committee. Courses taught include general chemistry lecture and lab, honors general chemistry lecture and lab, sophomore descriptive inorganic chemistry, senior inorganic chemistry lecture and lab, graduate organometallics and graduate group theory. Born in the Shenandoah Valley near Winchester, Virginia, Dr. Keiter has spent his professional life in the Midwest. After passing through a decade of playing chess and another of doing triathlons, he and his wife (Ellen) joined Jim Huheey in revising his classic inorganic text, Inorganic Chemistry, published by HarperCollins in 1993. Other books include: A Study Guide for Chemistry, Matter, and the Universe, W.A. Benjamin, Inc., Menlo Park, California, l976 (with E.A. Keiter), Teaching Assistance for Chemical Principles, W. A. Benjamin, Inc., Menlo Park, California, l974, (with W. Hutton and E.A. Keiter), and Teaching Guide for Models in Chemical Science, W.A. Benjamin, Inc., Menlo Park, California (l971). One son, Eric, is a Senior Member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories in computational science and resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and one daughter, Lise, is an Associate Professor of Piano Performance and Chair of the Music Department at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia.