As the COVID-19 pandemic transformed higher education, St. John's University (New York), among other academic institutions, worked to incorporate methodologies that would allow for social distancing and the attainment of hands-on experience that is expected of a science laboratory course. To account for the constraints that the pandemic posed, St.…

Pedagogical approaches for supporting students' argumentative writing in science laboratories have not been fully established. This article examines the development of argumentative abilities in undergraduate students enrolled in chemistry laboratory courses that employed two teaching sequences: (i) an argumentative writing workshop for conceptual…

In this article, we describe a fully computational laboratory exercise that results in an increase of students' understanding of what quantum chemical geometry optimization calculations are doing to find minimum energy structures. This laboratory exercise was conducted several times over multiple years at a small private undergraduate institution,…

Teaching green chemistry within the K-12 classroom has a positive impact on attitudes and perceptions of chemistry in society for future scientists and professionals, resulting in safer, less hazardous chemistry experiments and demonstrations. The state of New York has taken advantage of the benefits that green chemistry provide in the classroom…

This paper describes the course outline for a three credit hour nonlaboratory course in Environmental Health Chemistry which was taught from 1981 until 2008 at the State University of New York College at Oneonta. The purpose of this paper is to share the lecture outline in the hopes that it might be useful to others who are preparing to teach…

Polymers are present in most organic materials in the field of cultural heritage science and art conservation. This makes the study of polymer chemistry necessary in art conservation graduate training programs. Given each program approaches this important topic in different ways, the present paper describes areas of common ground and problems we,…

Preprint articles are available on servers, such as arXiv and ChemRxiv, at no-cost to benefit the movement toward open access of research. However, the use of preprint research articles as a reference source in academia is not heavily documented. To examine if researchers are utilizing preprint articles, this paper examines citation trends in the…

A variety of research studies reveal the advantages of actively engaging students in the learning process through collaborative work in the classroom. However, the complex nature of the learning environment in large college general chemistry courses makes it challenging to identify the different factors that affect students' cognitive and social…

To enhance students' learning and help them understand the whole picture of the field of inorganic chemistry, an inorganic laboratory technique course was designed that uses scaffolded, inquiry-based lab experiments and project-based learning. The scaffolded, inquiry-based laboratories taught in the first 8 weeks of the course helped students…

State and local officials who shuttered school buildings to stem the spread of COVID-19 in early 2020 are beginning to plan for the return of students and staff. They will need evidence-based strategies to know how best to create and maintain safe, healthy spaces. To inform their plans, federal health officials have provided guidance on cleaning…

There currently exists a significant deficiency in the nuclear chemistry workforce within the United States, despite its importance in areas of medicine, national security, and energy. Poor coverage of this topic across many chemistry departments at the undergraduate level likely contributes to this shortage. Increasing interest and hands-on…

The current study aims to investigate whether the instructional approach (flipped or traditional) and gender (male or female) influence students' sense of autonomy, relatedness, and competence, or influence their achievements in high school chemistry. Merrill's First Principles of Instruction theory was used to design the flipped classroom (FC)…

Cross-connections between the sciences and mathematics are emphasized through the Next Generation Science Standards and the Common Core State Standards in the United States. One topic that is a common bridge between math and science is the concept of measurement and unit conversions in the metric/English system. This article uses a mixed-methods…

This case study explored chemistry teacher isolation through the compilation and analysis of contextual characteristics and student performance data of 895 public schools and 2321 chemistry teachers in New York State in 2011-12. Data on the teachers' qualifications along with school characteristics were collected from several independent, publicly…

This empirical census study was a quasi-experimental analysis of certification level (primary vs. secondary) and in-field vs. out-of-field certification. The sample included chemistry teachers (n = 2312) and physics teachers (n = 1387) in New York State in 2011-12. Findings indicated that the number of out-of-field teachers was relatively low, but…