Students in a traditional undergraduate chemistry curriculum often view lecture and laboratory courses as discrete and unrelated, but practicing chemists know that topics that fall under the umbrella of the traditional subdisciplines in chemistry have considerable overlap in the real-world. To address this common disconnect in student understanding, the High Point University Department of Chemistry has created a series of upper-division lecture/laboratory courses called “CHM 311x: Advanced Topics Laboratory”. Thus far, two such courses have been developed. The first (CHM 3111) is called “The Science of the Small” an interdisciplinary course covering introductory topics in nanoscience and nanomaterials. The second (CHM 3112) is called, “Drug Discovery” which is a course at the interface of bioorganic and analytical chemistry. The common feature to each course is that the courses are team taught with faculty trained from different backgrounds, but with sufficient overlap to see the same problem from different perspectives. The nanoscience course was developed jointly by a materials and synthetic organic chemist, and the drug discovery course was developed by a bioorganic and bioanalytical chemist. In each course, the laboratory component of the course utilizes cutting-edge techniques relevant for each field such as high-resolution microscopy (SEM/AFM), micro/nanofabrication, computational drug docking, and evaluation of compounds for biological activity in bacterial and mammalian cell culture models. The lecture portions of the course provide sufficient theoretical understanding so that students are able to engage the recent primary literature and interact with regular guest lectures from local academia and industry. The design and philosophy of this type of course would readily lend itself to other interdisciplinary chemistry fields such as environmental or green chemistry, energy materials, sustainable materials, and many biochemistry topics and represent a helpful framework for developing upper-level laboratory courses.

High Point University advanced topics laboratories: Interdisciplinary lab courses designed to engage students with real-world topics and laboratory xperiences

ACS Spring 2022

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