The protein folding reaction is one of the most important chemical reactions in the human body. Yet, despite its importance, it is sometimes omitted from undergraduate courses due to the challenging nature of some of the underlying concepts. To help make key concepts of the protein folding reaction accessible to our undergraduate students, we…

The use of mass spectrometry (MS) is becoming widespread and rather routine in all levels of industry, government, and academia. Coupled with chromatographic methods, this powerful instrumental technique can be used to elucidate the composition of a complex sample and definitively identify constituents while offering the benefits of high-precision…

Organic chemistry courses enroll students from many majors with diverse interests. Although instructors may strive to appeal to these interests by relating course content to real life, it is challenging to intrinsically appeal to students at the personal level, particularly in high enrollment courses like organic chemistry. When students identify…

A required first-year laboratory course was overhauled into a semester-long biosciences course-based undergraduate research experience (BioCURE) with a goal of enhancing learning and improving retention. Student attributes and outcomes were continually monitored by the University's Institutional Research office over a 5-year period and compared…

Persons excluded due to ethnicity or race (PEERs) leave STEM at disproportionate rates; therefore, efforts to engage undergraduate PEERs are critical to creating a diverse STEM workforce. Through a Howard Hughes Medical Institute funded Inclusive Excellence grant (HHMI-IE), the REALISE (REALizing Inclusive Science Excellence) program was developed…

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices are a hallmark of high-impact pedagogy. Such practices are common in discussions regarding the retention of all students in STEM, but especially those with identities such as Black, Indigenous, persons of color, female, and LGBTQIA+. However, the extent to which DEI-framed content improves alignment…

Laboratory safety is a vital part of a chemical education and can be incorporated into courses throughout the chemistry curriculum. Discussions of laboratory safety can serve as an introduction to the important field of green chemistry. Exposure to this field can better prepare students for safer and more sustainable laboratory practices in…

A systems thinking approach to incorporating green chemistry and safety into laboratory culture is vital, as chemists will be at the molecular level of the innovative solutions to our global challenges. Training chemists to have the skills and culture to accomplish this feat in the safest way possible is pivotal to safe working conditions within…

Awareness of best safety practices in the industrial sector will allow students in chemistry and chemical engineering programs to apply these approaches to their own safety assessments. Process safety is a critical function within the pharmaceutical industry to ensure safety when performing reactions. An introduction to process safety and a series…

General safety and chemical training of undergraduate students is typically held at the first-year level. In this technology report, we propose a flexible strategy to improve students' general knowledge of safety for a second-year inorganic chemistry laboratory. The strategy is composed of an online interactive revision approach through the…

One of the more difficult concepts introduced in the first-year undergraduate course, general chemistry, is that of chirality. Typically, left and right hands are the common, macroscopic objects of reference used to demonstrate the quality of being nonsuperimposable, followed by the use of a mirror and molecular models, to illustrate molecular…

Despite tremendous efforts by instructors and textbook authors, students find it difficult to develop useful chemical intuitions about structures and key properties of the important d-block organometallic species that have a d[superscript 6], d[superscript 8], or d[superscript 10] d-electron count. A full molecular orbital analysis is not always…

A process for generating and writing an individual research proposal with or without access to advanced experimental techniques is described herein. This process was first included in a glycoconjugate biochemistry course to increase student interaction with more areas of the field, but the process was designed to be applicable elsewhere as well.…

YouTube is one of the most known and used social networks among students in the world, and undergraduate chemistry students are no exception. Undeniably, YouTube can offer several advantages for complementing university lessons in an asynchronous manner. There are many chemistry channels available on the internet; however, they are mainly too…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing restrictions are in place in most public settings, and the undergraduate laboratory is no exception. In order to accommodate social distancing requirements, many laboratory exercises are being redeployed in an online format, which deprives students of experiential learning opportunities in a real…