Evaluating undergraduate research in chemistry can be a daunting task. When everything works and the project is complete by graduation, assigning a letter grade is trivial. However, it is not uncommon for syntheses to fail and instruments to break, thus rendering a student’s research project unfinished. Sometimes projects stall due to lack of interest or time. In these cases, it is particularly challenging to assess a student and award a grade for work that is perceived to be incomplete. In this presentation, I will present various approaches to assessing undergraduate research in chemistry that are currently being used by faculty across the country. At George Mason University, we have developed two new rubrics to assess undergraduate scholarly work, one for the process and the other for the products of research. With these tools, faculty can more easily evaluate the quality of their student’s work, even when the outcomes may not be what was planned. Comparisons will be made to other assessment tools being employed and direct application to undergraduate research in chemistry will be described.

Assessing undergraduate research in chemistry: A comparison study

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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