There is a gap between the importance of certain archeological material sources and their perception, both by professionals and by the general public. Textiles, for example, are essential to understanding practices that marked daily life and rituals in the past, but they have often been extremely degraded over time, particularly in temperate…

This article examines the intersection of environmental justice and undergraduate chemistry education through a review of existing publications that highlight successful strategies for chemistry educators interested in incorporating environmental justice into their classrooms. It emphasizes the key roles of racial and social justice in the…

Faculty in the Chemistry and Environmental Science programs at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas, collaborated to develop an undergraduate course in Field-Based Environmental Chemistry. The course was developed and implemented as a 2-semester, 1-semester, and online, synchronous course offered during the 2020/21 COVID-19 pandemic. As…

Project-based learning units are often used for large scale work integrated learning (WIL) experiences in Liberal Studies Degrees as they offer scalability and sustainability of delivery to large cohorts. This systematic search and review evaluates the effectiveness of interdisciplinary project-based learning in Science Degree programs for…

Contemporary society of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) increasingly requires the education system (i.e., the school) to train competent, creative and proactive professionals who will be able to solve real life problems. If society is to achieve this, some key paradigm changes must occur in education. The school must first prepare…

While cheminformatics skills necessary for dealing with an ever-increasing amount of chemical information are considered important for students pursuing STEM careers in the age of big data, many schools do not offer a cheminformatics course or alternative training opportunities. This paper presents the Cheminformatics Online Chemistry Course…

The combined lab and lecture course is designed around the themes of colorants (dyestuffs and pigments) and fibers (natural and human-made) for nonscience majors. Students dye natural and synthetic fibers with natural dyes such as turmeric, raspberries, tea, and cochineal insects as well as synthetic dyes. The students observe the colorfast…

As strong proponents of problem-based learning (PBL), the authors designed and taught an interdisciplinary, team-taught PBL course on Writing Science for the Public at a midsize northeastern state university. This approach led to emphasizing collaboration and experiential learning and resulted in media-rich student projects.

James Madison University faculty team-teach an interdisciplinary mathematical modeling course for mathematics and biology students. We have used two different project-based approaches to emphasize the mathematical concepts taught in class, while also exposing students to new areas of mathematics not formally covered in class. The first method…

While X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD) is a fundamental analytical technique used by solid-state laboratories across a breadth of disciplines, it is still underrepresented in most undergraduate curricula. In this work, we incorporate XRPD analysis into an inquiry-based project that requires students to identify the crystalline component(s) of…

Scenes from the works of William Shakespeare were incorporated into individual and group projects for an upper-level chemistry class, instrumental analysis. Students read excerpts from different plays and then viewed a corresponding video clip from a stage or movie production. Guided-research assignments were developed based on these scenes. These…

A drug discovery project has been successfully implemented in a first-year general, organic, and biochemistry (GOB) health science course and second-year organic undergraduate chemistry course. This project allows students to apply the fundamental principles of chemistry and biology to a problem of medical significance, practice basic laboratory…

Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, WA) is renowned for the number of its courses that offer international and study-away opportunities. Inspired by the theme of sustainability, and my growing concern about the environmental impact of conventional fuels, I offered a course, Physics of Energy, for the first time during PLU's January 2011 term (a…

Taste perception was the focus of an undergraduate course in the health sciences that bridged the sciences and humanities. A problem-based learning approach was used to study the biological issues, whereas the cultural transmutations of these molecular mechanisms were explored using a variety of resources (novels, cookbooks, and films). Multiple…

A thematic course called "Climate Change: Chemistry and Controversy" was developed for upper-level non-STEM students. This course used the socioscientific context of climate change to teach chemical principles and the nature of science. Students used principles of agnotology (direct study of misinformation) to debunk climate change…