Redesigning the Major

If you had to redesign the traditional Chemistry major, so that it could run much leaner with fewer faculty, what could you do? That’s a question I’ve been pondering the past couple of weeks as I’ve written up an informal report related to reviewing the curriculum at a different institution. No faculty were being cut; they’ve just had trouble hiring after several failed searches, and folks are doing an admirable job in trying to keep a bare bones curriculum afloat.

It’s a major challenge to attract majors when you can’t sufficiently offer a suite of courses core to chemistry that flexibly prepares students for a variety of options post-college. If enrollments are low, administration might try to axe your offerings, and you’re caught in a spiral of fighting to just maintain what you have. It’s hard to thrive when you’re just trying to survive.

One approach is to provide multiple entry points. A student with a standard (decent) high school chemistry background, could go into an accelerated G-Chem course that focuses on chemical energetics. This might cover matter-light interactions and thermochemistry from G-Chem 1, and the nexus of thermodynamics-kinetics-equilibria from G-Chem 2. A student who’s had a second year of high school chemistry, typically Honors or A.P., might even be able to skip the accelerated G-Chem course.

A no-prerequisite attractively-themed chemistry course that content-wise covered molecular structure, chemical reactions and stoichiometry basics, and about four weeks of introductory organic chemistry, could be an entry point for students who have little or no background. But such a course might also attract a student with a stronger background who simply found the theme interesting. The Chemistry of Food is likely to be popular and as a theme is well-suited to cover the needed content. The environment, forensics, drugs/medicines, could be possible themes as well. A student who enjoyed this course might then take accelerated G-Chem, or O-Chem, or both!

Having taken accelerated G-Chem, a student could certainly take O-Chem. But offering a sophomore level Inorganic chemistry course would help ensure that a student takes a deeper dive into molecular structure and chemical bonding. Such a course would feature a more in-depth look at the periodic table, a qualitative introduction to molecular orbital theory, some acid-base theory, and an introduction to coordination chemistry. This would prepare the student well for a P-Chem course on quantum chemistry and spectroscopy. A student who’s had accelerated G-Chem would also be able to go on to a P-Chem course covering thermodynamics and kinetics.

Condensing the lab courses into smaller intense units, and separating them from the lecture courses, allows one to spread the workload more evenly. Instead of having a weekly lab attached to each course (typically for only one credit hour), the labs could be more intensive twice-a-week courses that award students three credit hours upon completion, similar to the lecture course. This streamlines student workload, given they have to take other classes, not just yours! It also streamlines faculty workload – right now, the way labs “count” towards one’s teaching load differs greatly across institutions.

I mapped out one example of what I called a “very lean yet robust” curriculum. It won’t quite meet the American Chemical Society (ACS) accreditation, although it is similar in spirit to what the ACS cares about. There are many other ways to design such curricula, but I found it a useful exercise to think about what’s fundamental and how to sequence courses so that the interested student who takes all the core courses comes out well prepared!