Chemistry Professor Leyte Winfield Gives Us The Inside Scoop On Spelman College’s Cosmetic Science Certification

As part of its online education platform eSpelman, Atlanta’s Spelman College, the leading historically Black college for women, has introduced a cosmetic science certification program conceptualized by chemistry and biochemistry professor Leyte Winfield.

In a video about the program, she says, “Whether you are creating your own products, looking to better understand the science that makes cosmetics possible, developing beauty content for media outlets or just interested in making the world a more beautiful place, the eSpelman cosmetics science certificate is for you.” To achieve certification, students are required to take five courses on subject matters such as toxicology, regulation and the psychology of beauty. Each course runs for eight weeks and costs $1,800.

The cosmetic science program, which kicked off its new term early this month, is an outgrowth of Winfield’s enthusiasm for beauty, chemistry and teaching. Ahead, we chat with her about her science background, putting together the curriculum for the program and what she hopes students get out of it.

How did you first become interested in the field of chemistry?

I’ve been passionate about chemistry since I was a sophomore in high school. I remember walking into my first chemistry class and being asked by the instructor, “Why are you here?” I’m not sure what response she was expecting, but I told her that I was going to be a chemist. From that point, I haven’t strayed from the idea.

That commitment and that conviction about the career path was born out of me being a natural inquirer all my life. I’ve always been inclined to some type of science, to studying how things around me work, questioning what they were composed of, how to make them better. I think it was always a part of even my play life as a child, and it naturally grew into being a love for chemistry.

Where did that passion take you?

I went to Dillard University in New Orleans. I was a chemistry major. Once I completed that degree, I moved over to the University of New Orleans, where I earned my Ph.D. My focus was in organic chemistry, in rational drug design. We were looking at developing treatments for cocaine abuse therapy, and that evolved into doing a postdoc related to cancer and applying the rational drug design theories to creating better cancer drugs.

Designing drugs for reproductive cancers, so prostate cancer, breast cancer and ovarian cancer, has been my main focus, but I was always passionate about cosmetics. One of the impetuses for this program is that I didn’t have the type of formalized direction for that passion as I had for just doing a basic chemistry degree. It’s coming full circle back to that passion for cosmetics and being able to show students how to connect basic science disciplines to the study of cosmetics and apply their knowledge to the beauty industry.

How did you make your way to Spelman?

After I did a postdoc, I wasn’t sure what my career would look like once I became a chemist or how that would work. In grad school, I wanted to do policy work or do some work for the FDA, but being a faculty member was not on that list. I was asked one day in graduate school if I would ever consider it, and my thought has always been—and it still is—the only way I would go into academia is if it gave me an opportunity to give back to my community.

I had a very specific need to not only be a researcher and a professor, but I wanted to be in a space where my contributions mattered not only to my career, but to my community. I wanted to be able to train people who looked like me. It was clear, in order for me to do that, I would only do it at Spelman or I would do it at my alma mater, which is Dillard University. As I was completing my postdoc and plotting my next career transition, the position became available at Spelman, and I went for it. I’ve been here since.

How did the new cosmetic certification program come about?

Spelman was in the process of thinking about models for reaching beyond our normal student population to see if we could be more of service to the general public. There was a call for certificate ideas, and my passion for cosmetics was awakened again. Having the opportunity to create something new and without boundaries of our typical curriculum gave me an opportunity to really reengage this thought of cosmetics, how that might look in an academic setting and what type of knowledge we might want students to have.

The initial impetus of it was to make the certificate program in the eSpelman space, but also to use it as an opportunity to have a proof of concept for the undergraduate space. Right now in the U.S., I only know of University of Toledo that has an undergraduate degree focused on cosmetic science. There are some formulation science degrees around the country within various engineering programs, but nothing formally called cosmetic science.

I’m excited that we get the opportunity to start with the certificate program, thinking about building out that curriculum for the undergraduate level and then just hoping that really soon we’ll have it in the undergraduate space.

What classes are the cosmetic certification program students able to take?

We have a series of four classes. The first one is a foundations course. It is our prerequisite course, and it touches on everything that students could potentially go in depth with throughout their certificate. It covers concepts of beauty, looking at Greek concepts of beauty, and then concepts of beauty from the African American perspective, looking at different beauty practices and moving into how it translates into beautification practices and cosmetics.

We also talk about the basic chemistry of ingredients in that course. So, they get a little bit of organic chemistry in terms of understanding the structure of a chemical that’s found in an ingredient and how many chemicals are contained in ingredients. We talk about the safety of ingredients and what we need to know to understand what’s considered toxic or safe to use. We talk about label requirements and regulatory bodies in the U.S., and then we move into  formulations for skin, hair, color and fragrance. It’s not too in depth, but it sets them up to go into the future courses in the sequence.

After this course, students can move into a biochemistry-type course specifically about cosmetic science. They can learn about the different biological processes that could be impacted by active cosmetics or cosmeceuticals, which for the most part, for legal reasons, it’s just over-the-counter drugs. They talk about that because supplements now are big, ingesting collagen to strengthen the skin. And there are hyaluronic acids and retinol and other active molecules that are now in our cosmetics.

Getting students to understand what’s happening is critical knowledge for them to have. There’s also a laboratory course where they learn in depth about the basic formulations for skin and hair. Then, we have a natural products course where we talk about the sources of natural ingredients and raw materials, and how we extract things from plants and animals that we use in fragrances or as essential oils.

Then, there is a course on how we formulate things for film and stage. That focuses on giving students fundamental knowledge around silicones. They talk about chemical structures in that course, how they’re used and how they have changed over time. The course uses case studies like “The Wizard of Oz” to illustrate how we transform people into these characters safely, how we treat their skin. That would be one of our more advanced courses, but they will have an opportunity to take that course if it’s something of interest.

The one that I’m missing that ties all this together is toxicology for cosmetics where they talk about regulatory bodies, understanding toxicity and safety, and why something might be toxic at a particular concentration, but it might still be allowable in a cosmetic at a lower concentration. They get to grapple with conversations and have a working knowledge to manage those conversations.

“I want them to feel comfortable that, as a creator or as a consumer of these products, they understand exactly what they’re using and exactly what they’re providing to the public.”

How did you establish the curriculum?

We started from what we would need to give students to make sure that they’re literate in this area. For me, it was understanding how people use beauty practices, understand the toxicities, understand natural products. I came to a group of my colleagues with those ideas, and we formed this team that helped us to really flush them out and bring other ideas to the surface. It was a team of about six faculty members, and everybody took a class that they were most interested in.

I teach the first class, which is Fundamentals of Cosmetics, and I’ll also be helping with the Makeup for Film course. I have Dr. [Marisela De Leon] Mancia who’s doing the Molecules of Life, which is our biochemistry course, Dr. [Kristini] Miles is doing the toxicology course. She’s a toxicologist from the industry actually.

We have Dr. [Davita] Camp who’s working on our laboratory courses, and Dr. [Cachetne] Barrett, who’s doing the natural products course. She’s actually a biologist, but she works in the chemistry department, and she has a family background of making at-home products. She makes her own soaps and lotions. In this course, she is bringing in not only things that we understand from textbooks, but things that she’s brought from her own experiences to help students understand how we can safely extract essential oils, different plants that might be of interest, what things we need to be concerned about.

In addition to this group at Spelman that helped me to conceive and flesh out the curriculum, we worked with individuals from the Society of Cosmetic Chemists. They consulted with us. They gave us insight on different resources we could use to create the curriculum. They’ve been a great partner. They’ve used their networks when we had questions to bring in other experts to make sure that the curriculum was sound and that we were giving students the information that would really make a difference in their career. So, it was really a gigantic team effort to develop the curriculum.

Do students have to have a chemistry background or be pursuing a chemistry degree in order to participate in the program?

They don’t. We’ve tried to gear it toward first-year college students, so you may not have any expertise in the field. We try to give them the science that they would need to really not only understand the concepts we’re covering at that moment, but be ready for the biochem course and the toxicology course. All of the courses were designed for individuals who don’t have any college experience.

Why is it important to offer this program?

As we think about job readiness and making sure students are able to use their skillsets in the way they want to use them, I’ve seen the trend where a number of students are very interested in this area. They want to be skilled in this area. And so we need to be able to have a curriculum that helps them with that, that gets them to where they want to be. Besides me just being really passionate about wanting to be somewhere connected to cosmetics, my other motivation is that I want to make sure students have what they need to be successful and what they need to connect with their passion.

What careers do you anticipate certificate program graduates pursuing?

In the certificate course, what I’m finding is that there are a number of people who are already in their careers. I have aestheticians who are making their own products currently. They’re individuals who are in the cosmetic industry. What they’ve said to me is that this is a credential that affirms what it is that they’re already doing.

They’re an aesthetician making serum, and they’ve been pretty successful with making that serum, but maybe there are topics around solubility, pH that their partner chemists wanted to have with them that they didn’t have a full understanding of. They want to be an equal partner, if you will, in these conversations. Even if they’re not doing the lab experiments, they want to be able to bring something to the conversation.

So, the individuals that I see taking this course, they’re looking for that added credential or they’re using it as a continuing education. We’re hoping that, when we get it into the bachelor of science level and bring it to our undergraduate students, it is as flexible as a chemistry degree or engineering degree because there’s a great deal of conversation around materials.

When you get into clays and and how you encapsulate things and make things slow release and more sustainable over time, those are basic science concepts. They really would be marketable to any place that would actually hire chemists or engineers or other interdisciplinary teams.

Are there other ways you see the program evolving over time?

We have a lot of ideas. We’re just wanting to get past this first year of the certificate course. But the biggest thing is I want to bring it to my undergraduate students at Spelman. The eSpelman certificate focuses on a non-Spelman population. It’s separate from our traditional curriculum, and so my big focus right now is to translate this certificate into something that we can put into the bachelor’s degree level.

What do you hope students ultimately take away from the program?

I want them to be literate in the terminology around the chemistry related to cosmetics. I want them to feel comfortable negotiating those rooms where conversations are being had. I want them to understand the toxicity of compounds. I want them to understand the renewability of certain natural products that we have access to. And I want them to feel comfortable that, as a creator or as a consumer of these products, they understand exactly what they’re using and exactly what they’re providing to the public.