A major research thrust in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is focused on how to retain students as STEM majors. The accumulation of seemingly insignificant negative experiences in STEM classes can, over time, lead STEM students to have a low sense of belonging in their disciplines, and this can lead to lower…

Physics laboratory courses have been generally acknowledged as an important component of the undergraduate curriculum, particularly with respect to developing students' interest in, and understanding of, experimental physics. There are a number of possible learning goals for these courses including reinforcing physics concepts, developing…

Engaging students in research has the potential to benefit students, faculty, and institutions. The authors present a case study documenting strategic efforts to advance a culture of undergraduate research at Hunter College, City University of New York. Assembling a team, removing obstacles, increasing awareness and engagement, identifying goals,…

National Research Council polices (NRC, 2012a, 2012b) and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015 (Pub. L. No. 114-145) call for educators to have active roles in teaching to achieve new goals and purposes for education. A high priority is teaching content knowledge and information fluency skills that will result in deep learning, higher…

We used an "approach to learning" theoretical framework to explicate the ways students engage in scientific modeling. Approach to learning theory suggests that when students approach learning deeply, they link science concepts with prior knowledge and experiences. Conversely, when students engage in a surface approach to learning, they…

An elective course, "Toward the Greening of Our Minds": Green and Sustainable Chemistry, has been offered at Washington College since 2005. This new course without laboratory is designed for chemistry and biology majors and minors who have previously taken two semesters of general chemistry and organic chemistry. Due to the popularity of…

Environmentalism's wider and wilder possibilities today appear as regions of seeming darkness that bracket or frame acceptable environmental thinking. One of these barely-mentionable darknesses is outer space--the cosmos. Another is the inner and chthonic powers of the land and natural beings generally. This essay aims to bring these two kinds of…

Recently, 57 undergraduate students at the University of Michigan were assigned the task of solving a crystal structure, given only the electron density map of a 1.3 Å crystal structure from the electron density server, and the position of the N-terminal amino acid. To test their knowledge of amino acid chemistry, the students were not given the…

Prediction of number of [Pi]-bonds, [sigma]-bonds, single and triple bonds of aliphatic unsaturated open-chain and cycloalkynes is a vitally important tool for students of chemistry at undergraduate and graduate level for solving different kinds of problems regarding different chemical reactions. In this manuscript, we try to present a simple and…

"What Will They Learn?" has been documenting for the last 13 years the crisis of weak core curriculum requirements. In addition to helping students choose the right college for the right reasons, American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) works with college and university leaders on campuses around the country to strengthen curricula…

Our paper describes a solution we found to a still existing need to develop mathematical modeling courses for undergraduate biology majors. Some challenges of such courses are: (i) relatively limited exposure of biology students to higher-level mathematical and computational concepts; (ii) availability of texts that can give a flavor of how…

The classic technique for sulfate analysis in an undergraduate quantitative analysis lab involves precipitation as the barium salt with barium chloride, collection of the precipitate by gravity filtration using ashless filter paper, and removal of the filter paper by charring over a Bunsen burner. The entire process is time-consuming, hazardous,…

Interdisciplinary experiments are being offered in upper-division chemistry laboratory courses in an attempt to encourage students to make a connection between techniques learned in one discipline to affirm chemical principles that form the basis of chemical reactions in another chemistry discipline. A new interdisciplinary experiment is described…

Identifying students' misconceptions and learning difficulties and finding effective ways of addressing them has been one of the major concerns in chemistry education. However, the chemistry education community has paid little attention to determining discipline-specific aspects of chemistry that can lead to learning difficulties and…

Arsenic is a toxic element to which humans are primarily exposed through food and water; it occurs as a result of human activities and naturally from the earth's crust. An experiment was developed for a senior level analytical laboratory utilizing an Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS) for the analysis of arsenic in household…