The modern research environment is multidisciplinary and cross-functional, requiring individuals to be expert in their own fields while working in collaboration with scientists from other disciplines to solve complex problems. Upon graduation, students are well-versed in their respective majors, but are typically not exposed to the soft skills needed to be successful in this setting. We are modifying the New Jersey City University lab curriculum to mirror the experience of working in a modern research environment like the pharmaceutical industry by introducing “course clusters” consisting of lab courses from the chemistry and biology curricula that are coupled together to solve a research problem. Our initial effort has linked the Organic Chemistry II lab with the Microbiology lab and Cell Biology lab to identify antimicrobial compounds based on a hydroxamic acid motif. This presentation will review our results to date.

Simulating the real-world research experience through course clustering

2019 Spring National Meeting

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