Our 300-level advanced organic teaching laboratory curriculum delivers process-oriented research preparation to 12 students per section each Fall semester. Participants gain experience exploring, expanding upon, and formally writing about the scope and limitations of known green chemistry reaction methodology. They incorporate substrates that have not been reported in the literature, which adds problem solving and independence to the project. The methodologies involve reactions for acetal formation, the Baylis-Hillman, the Biginelli, a cross-metathesis, an imine formation, a reductive amination, or a Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling. As a starting point, students receive a peer-reviewed journal article, with a method, for a given reaction. They vary their reactants across the lab section, with the goal being to validate, or expand, upon each article’s method and applicability. Traditional laboratory skills—reaction set-up, reaction purification, thin-layer chromatography analysis, and spectroscopy analysis—are reinforced as students conduct these individualized experiments. Experiment data is shared among students in the lab section performing the same methodology; this creates larger data sets to analyze for trends in reactivity. SciFinder provides background information, citable literature, and reference data. Students prepare reports on their findings using the Journal of Undergraduate Chemistry Research author’s guide. This course has produced multiple student co-authored experimental procedures, from 2015-2016, which are presently published in the ChemSpider SyntheticPages open access database. This increases student interest in—and motivation toward—communicating science. Many of our learning objectives align with the American Chemical Society Committee on Professional Training’s recommendations towards in-depth open-ended activities that increase student autonomy during experimental design, implementation, data analysis, and the use of chemical literature. Our learner outcomes provide scaffolding as students begin their required 400-level independent study research course.

Incorporating research training into an advanced laboratory course

255th National Meeting (2018)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.