A two-week laboratory experiment for students in advanced inorganic chemistry is described. Students prepare and characterize a cobalt(III) complex coordinated by a thioether ligand during the first week of the experiment and then study the kinetics of Co-S bond cleavage in basic solution during the second week. The synthetic portion of the laboratory is a good introduction to the preparation of inert transition-metal complexes and the modification of coordinated ligands. The kinetic portion of the laboratory introduces students to the S[subscript N]1CB base hydrolysis mechanism and to the analysis of kinetic data. (Contains 4 figures.)