University of Delaware
GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT THE FUTURE: CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY OF CONTEMPORARY ISSUES
What should a capstone undergraduate experience be? The 1998 Boyer Commission Report, "Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Universities," asserts that "senior seminar or other capstone courses appropriate to the discipline need to be part of every undergraduate program" and it "should be the culmination of the inquiry-based learning of earlier course work, broadening, deepening, and integrating the total experience of the major." How can such words be transformed into action?
The University of Delaware’s senior seminar course for chemistry and biochemistry majors, "Chemistry and Biochemistry of Contemporary Issues," offers students the opportunity to work collaboratively in small groups, develop new pedagogical materials, and confront relevant societal issues. The course integrates chemical concepts students have learned in their undergraduate education, and applies them to practical, real-world issues. The goals are to educate students on the roles science and technology play in society, and prepare them for the rapidly changing industrial environment. These changes have not, for the most part, been emphasized in normal coursework. The senior seminar course benefits immensely from the involvement of a retired DuPont chemist. This industrial perspective lends a much-valued practical dimension to the course.
The Genesis of the Idea
Chemistry and biochemistry majors at the University of Delaware need two semesters of the Chemistry Senior Seminar to graduate. Over the years, both faculty and students had begun to see this requirement as an obligation, rather than opportunity. Students tended to put in minimal effort for a Pass/Fail grade in the one-credit course. While the seminars on research topics that students presented to their classmates gave them important experience in oral communication, there were other goals, such as those outlined in the Boyer Report, which needed to be included. Early efforts by professors to instill greater interests in the class had come to naught.
"I ‘taught’ the course twice for honors students about a decade ago and tried to inject some interest by building the course around controversial societal issues relating to chemistry," notes Hal White, Professor of Biochemistry. "But that theme was not adopted by those who taught the course in the intervening years."
In 1993, White learned about problem-based learning as practiced by medical schools. He and colleagues in several other science departments adopted the model and, with NSF assistance, adapted it to a variety of introductory courses. White says, "my whole perception of how people learn has changed in the past decade. That in turn has dramatically changed the way I teach and what I expect from my students. I was ready for another try at Senior Seminar."
That opportunity came in 1997. White and Murray Johnston, Professor of Chemistry, volunteered to teach the course after the retirement of a colleague who had supervised the course for many years. This new responsibility coincided with a discussion with Manny Panar, a retired DuPont chemist and adjunct faculty member in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department. Panar was working on a project for the Council for Chemical Research (CCR) in which web sites describing applications of chemistry to industrial problems would be available for teachers. Their interests merged and the course evolved out of the need for a more substantive capstone experience. As a consequence, the course was completely revised in 1997. In 1998, the involvement of other people like Panar was expanded to include faculty and administrators across campus, leaders of environmental groups, and industrial chemists, who attended student presentations and assisted in evaluating the student web-sites and seminars. The presence of these "wild cards" provided added interest and incentive for the students and reinforced the idea that this was a capstone course preparing students for employment after graduation.
The CCR's web-site that Panar created presents 10 to 50 minute "modules" about chemistry and chemical engineering that teachers can include in their courses. These modules are intended to relate the technical content of courses to its application in both the work place and society in general. In 1997 and 1998, interest-related groups of three or four students developed and peer reviewed modules for potential inclusion on the CCR site. They presented their to the class. By combining cooperative learning approaches with the need to present the information to an audience without specialized background, the assignment builds skills in teamwork; oral, written, and visual communication; and in critical thinking. It also reinforces the relationships between science, technology and societal issues which students have been learning during their undergraduate years.
Course Structure
Each student in the course:
completes individual assignments relating to career plans and employment opportunities,
participates in in-class activities relating to effective oral and visual communication,
engages in discussion relating to societal and ethical issues in science,
works with other students to find, evaluate, and organize information on a particular subject,
works with other students to create a web-site on the subject (the site must have ready-to-use figures, informative commentary, and multiple relevant links to other sites) that will serve as a resource for faculty, students, and others interested in the subject,
formulates and supports a well documented position on that subject, including how the factual chemical aspects relate to the subjective issues involved in societal decision-making, and
presents their position to members of the class and to two or more external evaluators.
In Fall 1997, student presentations and web-sites were directed to supporting or refuting the propositions that follow. Based on student evaluations from 1998 of the 1997 web-sites, the one on nuclear power was voted best by a narrow margin.
Molecular genetic analysis of blood creates more problems for society than it solves.
The use of antibiotics in animal food represents a long-term health hazard to humans by promoting antibiotic resistance in pathogens.
It is likely that biomedical research will lead to total control of HIV infections.
Drinking water should be treated with hydrogen peroxide rather than chlorine.
Nuclear power generation is the only viable long-term solution to the energy problem.
Dioxin is not as toxic as the press makes it out to be.
The widespread use of insecticides is a waste of money and ineffective in the long run.
Consumption of mega-doses of Vitamin C is healthful.
Acid rain can be prevented without compromising industrial output.
The 1998 web-sites include an expanded list of topics.
The Job Hunting Assignment
An example of how the course seeks to develop real-world knowledge is the job hunting assignment. According to Johnston, "the job hunting assignment can be the first time a student articulates career options. Substantial insight is gained by discussion with peers and instructors." In fact, one of the department's 1998 graduates (completed the course in Fall 1997) is employed in a job she found as the result of this assignment.
From the Assignment:
As a senior you will need to more than think about what you will be doing after graduation. Ten or fifteen years from now, when you look back on your senior year, you will see that the decisions you made and the actions you took this year will likely have had a significant influence on the course of your life. "Taking a year off" after graduation has become a way to defer decisions and actions by many college students. Now is the time to take stock of your options and make some commitments. While these are things only you can do, Senior Seminar and this assignment will help you think through some of the possibilities, provide focus to your actions, and hone skills you will need.
Many of you are, or soon will be, looking for employment. This assignment is intended to help you in that effort. Exercise your job fantasy. Look for that dream job on the Internet, at the Career Services Center, in magazines, or in newspapers. Find one advertised job that looks like a position you would like to apply for soon or after further education. Gather some specific background information that you would need before applying and interviewing for this position. Then answer the following questions:
Why is this job interesting to you?
What strengths and weaknesses do you think you have relative to the advertised position?
What could you do to make yourself more competitive for this position?
In no more than two pages, provide answers to these questions and turn in your responses at the beginning of class, Wednesday, September 30.
Please append a copy of the advertised position and indicate its source. Be prepared to discuss your answers in your group and with the class.
Does it Work?
What do the students think? The course was evaluated at the end of the fall 1997 semester and will be evaluated again this year. The students liked the format. Some thought it was too much work for a one-credit, Pass/Fail course, but few thought the course should be graded. As noted, one student found a job after graduation directly as a result of the job-hunting assignment. Perhaps more interesting than course evaluations were the students' responses to a series of propositions about societal issues at the beginning and at the end of the course. The average response only changed significantly on topics that were presented by student groups in the class. The final positions correlated with those presented (but not necessarily with those of the instructors).
What do the instructors think? Faculty who volunteer to teach this course do so as an overload to their normal teaching assignment, a significant disincentive for participation. However, as Johnston notes "in the current format, this is a fun course to teach. The instructors get to interact with students on a level rarely encountered in traditional courses."
What does the future hold? There is no commitment by the department to continue this format. Next semester the course will be supervised by two other faculty who will use the traditional format of assigning individual research presentations to students.
WEB SITES
The syllabus and other aspects of the course