Environmental chemistry is likely highly interesting to undergraduate students, but is not often included in undergraduate chemistry curricula at the introductory level.  To integrate environmental chemistry throughout the undergraduate curriculum, we have designed a series of undergraduate courses to engage undergraduate students as early as their first-year, so that students with little previous experience can understand how introductory chemical principles are applied to a variety of environmental applications.  We developed a flagship introductory lab-based course, “Introduction to Environmental Chemistry of the Arctic,” which is offered for both on-campus and distance modalities, especially geared toward first-year students with no prior chemistry or research experience. Through this class, students are provided with context through a broadly focused introductory class that exposes them to motivations for environmental chemical research, current faculty research activities, and also the opportunity to directly participate in the research process through peer mentored research teams collaborating on course-directed projects. Both distance and in-class delivery is facilitated through interactive synchronous lecture periods.  All students are provided equivalent experiences in the laboratory through the use of custom commercially produced, instructor-developed laboratory kits, including a combination of kitchen and virtual experiments. As part of the laboratory, peer-mentored research teams sample and measure a variety of water quality parameters of local waters, using both wet-chemical methods and instrumental probes connected to provided tablet devices. Survey data show that after a first offering, students responded well to this course structure and offers a new perspective for introducing undergraduate students to environmental chemistry.

Introductory campus and distance-delivered course to engage first year undergraduates in envrionmental chemistry

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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