SACSCOC Fifth Year Interim Report
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Assessment : 2012 - 2013 : Educational Programs :
Chemistry MS
Chemistry MS
3 Goals 6 Objectives 7 Indicators 7 Criteria 7 Findings 6 Actions
| GOAL: Develop Presentation Skills |
| Objective |
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Students completing CHM 5100 will, at least once during their tenure as graduate students, demonstrate the ability to make a research presentation. |
| Indicator |
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| During their tenure as graduate students, all students will present at least one departmental seminar. The faculty, through the peer-review evaluation rubric, will determine the presentation's acceptability. |
| Criterion |
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| All graduate students in chemistry are required to take CHM 5100 at least once during their tenure as graduate students. To pass CHM 5100, students are required to receive an acceptable peer-rating on a required research presentation. Within the course, each student evaluates all other student presentations. The rubric is the last page of the syllabus. |
| Finding |
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CHEM 5100 used anonymous student evaluation forms for the first time in the fall of 2012 (11 students) and again in the spring of 2013 (9 students) in an effort to make the students' peer comments more meaningful (the instructor's form is signed). Poor student comments have not been as much of a problem in this graduate seminar as the undergraduate seminar (CHEM 4100). Student comments improved somewhat in this evaluation period, but it's difficult to clearly attribute the differences to the use of the anonymous comment sheet. A number of experienced teaching assistants were in the seminar in this cycle and that might be more influential. The 11 students enrolled in the fall of 2012 included all of our graduate students. The 9 students enrolled in the spring of 2013 did not include all of our graduate students. The total number of chemistry graduate students in the spring was 14. The 9 students enrolled in the spring included our 4 new graduate students. The 5 students who did enroll in the spring had already taken the seminar 3 times. |
Actions for Objective:
| Action |
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| Changes proposed for the next academic year will be more time added at the course onset discussing the comment critiquing process. More specifically, an example, student comment sheet with example comments/critiques will be distributed to the students and discussed. The expected improvements from an increased focus on the critiquing process might be written student comments that are more in-depth, thorough, or comprehensive with concrete suggestions of how the talk could be improved. |
| GOAL: Deliver A Curriculum With Appropriate Discipline Specific Knowledge |
| Objective |
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| Modern organometallic chemistry is a subfield of inorganic chemistry that engages chemical principles and concepts of bonding, structure, and reactivity mastered throughout undergraduate and graduate curricula. The graduate-level Organometallic Chemistry course (CHEM 5385) is designed to review many of these principles and concepts in the first half of the semester in a classical lecture format. In the second half of the semester each graduate student is given a subject area covered in a text chapter. The student is tasked with preparing two or three lecture-discussion presentations that include use of PowerPoint, supported review of the chapter material, and white-board interactive discussion of one or more example problem exercises, as well as extemporaneous responses to class questions. |
| Indicator |
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| All students in Organometallic Chemistry (CHEM 5385) are required to demonstrate their ability to be professonally conversant within the assigned topic, capable of preparing a professional presentation, and expected to maintain professional bearing while serving as discussion leader. Graduate student presentations are evaluated through peer-evaluation and professor evaluation using a summary, five-point Likert rating scale. |
| Criterion |
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A super-majority of chemistry students (68.2%) are expected to have an average evaluation within one standard deviation of the mean or higher than one standard deviation above the mean on their presentation-discussion assignment. |
| Finding |
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In the fall semester of 2013, the mean Likert evaluation score was 3.38 with a standard deviation of 0.48. Student performance for the fall of 2013 (77.8%) exceeded the evaluation criterion. Of the graduate students in Organometallic Chemistry (CHEM 5385), all but two individuals met or exceeded expectations. One of these individuals was very close to the minimum cut-off score (2.91) with a summary evaluation score of 2.89. |
Actions for Objective:
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To improve on student performance, refined guidelines for the PowerPoint materials concerning relative numbers of slides and appropriate preparation of figures or tables should be provided. |
| GOAL: Deliver A Curriculum With Appropriate Discipline Specific Knowledge |
| Objective |
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| The process of peer-review of manuscripts for the scientific literature is a fundamental part of science. Students in Analytical Spectroscopy (CHEM 5368, taught every 2 to 2.5 years) read and discuss published peer-reviewed literature articles throughout this course (there is no assigned textbook). One of the objectives of this course is for students to learn the nuts and bolts of the systematic process of scientific peer-review. Mastery of the requirements for modern high quality technical scientific publication is required to meet one of the primary objectives of this graduate course in chemistry. |
| Indicator |
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| All students in the class are required to understand and correctly order the sequence of events, identify the players in the process (authors, editors, and reviewers), detail the feedback nature of the review process, and be able to critique both technical writing, figures, schematics, or imagery required in chemical publications. |
| Criterion |
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| Eighty percent of graduate students taking the final exam in the class will score within one standard deviation of the mean or higher on a written question on the final designed to evaluate their mastery of the Indicator. |
| Finding |
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| In spring 2013, students scored substantially higher than the Criterion (85% scored within 1 standard deviation of mean or higher on the spring 2013's peer-review process question); however, there were common mistakes in understanding about the review feedback process. |
Actions for Objective:
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| Subsequent CHEM 5368 classes will be assessed on an ongoing basis for this Indicator. Examples of reviewer feedback from the instructor's own manuscript's anonymous peer reviews will be introduced to the class to provide examples of reviewer feedback to help students in mastering the reviewer feedback step of scientific peer-review. The criterion can be increased in subsequent years after more course-to-course variability has been measured. |
| GOAL: Deliver A Curriculum With Appropriate Discipline Specific Knowledge |
| Objective |
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| Organic reaction mechanisms is a broad area of organic chemistry that requires an understanding of the basic structural-electronic properties of organic molecules. The graduate course CHEM 5362 is focused on the examination of alkylation, oxidation, reduction, substitution, elimination, rearrangement, and electrocyclic processes. As each topic is covered, in-class and out-of-class problems are assigned to give each graduate student ample practice and experience at applying the material. Since application is the central focus, all work involves open access to course materials. |
| Indicator |
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| All graduate students in this course will demonstrate their mastery of organic reaction mechanisms and their application to specific reactions through multiple applied problem sets and periodic examinations. Evaluation of the student's work is based on the appropriateness and acceptability of their answers based on current literature. |
| Criterion |
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| All (100%) of the students will score within one standard deviation of the mean or higher and within two standard deviations of the high score on the final examination. |
| Finding |
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| During the spring 2013 semester, 78% of the students scored one standard deviation of the mean or higher and 67% were within two standard deviations of the high for the class. |
Actions for Objective:
| Action |
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| The next time the course is offered, at the beginning of the semester the instructor will outline the requirements for the final examination. A topic-by-topic outline of what is expected from the student by the time the class reaches the final will be presented to the class. The instructor will emphasize the importance of fulfilling the mastery of the outline material from the beginning of the course. |
| GOAL: Deliver A Curriculum With Appropriate Discipline Specific Knowledge |
| Objective |
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| The field of spectroscopy extends into many industrial sectors such as optical communications, chemical analysis, and forensic science. There are too many individual spectroscopic techniques to cover in a single semester, but a focus on quantum mechanics and molecular symmetry unites them all. The graduate course CHEM 5385 – Symmetry and Spectroscopy – covers the quantum roots of spectroscopy, the power of symmetry to illucidate the interpretation of spectroscopic data, and the advanced topic of spectroscopic modeling. Hand-written assignments, short discussion topics, and extensive mathematical assignments in Excel are used to give each graduate student the experience of analyzing real problems in spectroscopy. These assignments push the student beyond a simple knowledge of the topic toward the higher-level skills of synthesis and evaluation as they compare their model results to experimental data. |
| Indicator |
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| All graduate students in this course will demonstrate their mastery of symmetry-based spectroscopic modeling through multiple applied problem sets and periodic examinations. Evaluation of the student's work is based on the appropriateness and acceptability of their answers based on current literature and experimental data. A final summative modeling assignment will be used to indicate a student’s ability to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the ability of a spectroscopic model to fit experimental data. |
| Criterion |
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| All (100%) of the students will score within one standard deviation of the mean or higher and within two standard deviations of the high score on the final modeling assignment. |
| Finding |
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| This course was taught in the Fall 2012, and a 2-hour final exam was used to track student success toward the objective. The students satisfied the criterion, but the final exam was less comprehensive than it could have been due to the fact that in had to be completed in two hours. |
Actions for Objective:
| Action |
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| The final modeling assignment and grading rubric will be prepared from the assignments delivered in previous semesters of this course. This final assignment will allow the student more time to synthesize their model, apply it to the data, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the model using the skills gained in the course. This action will be implemented when this course is taught again in three years. |
| GOAL: Provide Original Research Opportunities For Graduate Students |
| Objective |
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| Each student will successfully prepare and defend a master's thesis on research performed under the direction of a chemistry faculty member. |
| Indicator |
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| Students will orally present their master's thesis work to the public and will defend their work through questions from the public and additional questions about the research project from their thesis committee. |
| Criterion |
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| Each student is expected to pass the thesis defense as determined by a consensus of the student's thesis committee. |
| Finding |
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| Five graduate students successfully defended their master's theses, as judged by their respective thesis committees, one in the fall semester of 2012 and four during the summer semester of 2013. |
| Indicator |
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| Each student is expected to complete a thesis describing the basis for the research, the experiments and results of those experiments, and a discussion of those results. The basis for the research and the discussion of the results must be supported by appropriate reference to the scientific literature. As part of the defense of the thesis, the thesis committee will evaluate the quality of scientific referencing in the manuscript. |
| Criterion |
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| At least 85% of theses presented to thesis committees will have the quality of scientific referencing evaluated as meeting expectations. |
| Finding |
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| Five students completed their master's thesis in the past calendar year (one in the fall 2012 term and four in the summer 2013 term). All five of the committees found that the scientific references in the final version of the theses were of acceptable quality. |
Actions for Objective:
| Action |
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Of the five students that finished their M.S. degrees this past year, they came from 4 different research groups. The diversity of our program, in terms of areas of research in chemistry, makes it difficult to generalize. The completion of research, followed by the writing and defense of the thesis, is our program's ultimate achievement for our students. As such, we are loath to give up an Objective of Completion of the M.S. Thesis. However, as a learning objective that we must find fault with to indicate improvement of our program, it leaves something to be desired. We will not use "Completion of Master's Thesis" as a learning objective next year. |
| Previous Cycle's "Plan for Continuous Improvement" |
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We have been rebuilding the number of graduate students in our program. In chemistry, virtually all of our graduate students are supported by graduate assistantships (and this is generally true all around the U.S.). Consequently, in order to "grow" our program, we need to have increasing numbers of assistantships. We were fortunate to have more assistantships this year, and we had 11 teaching assistantships in the fall and spring semesters. Of course, graduate school is a temporary place for students, and two of these students graduated at the end of the spring term. Three more are expected to graduate at the end of this summer. One student had personal issues and left the program. Consequently, more than half of the 11 will not be with us in the coming fall semester--but new students are expected to replace them.
The two students that completed their degrees at the end of this spring semester are moving on to Ph.D. programs (at Rutgers and Auburn). We expect our program to continue to be successful. We produce students who, for the most part, move on to Ph.D. programs and are successful there. |
| Update on Previous Cycle's "Plan for Continuous Improvement" |
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The student evaluation form for seminars was modified to make the comments anonymous.
We continue to carefully monitor and evaluate our students' progress as they complete their theses and defend them. We consider the quality of the defense, their ability to answer questions on wide ranging topics in chemistry and their ability to appropriately reference the scientific literature. We were able to not only replace the students that finish, but we actually grew the number of students in the program. In the 2011-2012 year we had 11 active students (the 12th was on leave) in the program in the fall semester and 12 in the spring semester. Five of those graduated and one left the program. In the past year we had 11 students in the fall semester (with one graduating) and in the spring semester we had 14 students. During this past summer 4 students graduated and one left the program. |
| Plan for Continuous Improvement |
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For the seminar, sample critiques and comments will be provided at the beginning of the course.
The next time organometallic chemistry is offered, the instructor will provide refined guidelines for the powerpoint presentations. The next time analytical spectroscopy is offered, examples of actual peer reviews will be provided. The next time organic reaction methods is offered, the instructor will outline the requirements for the final examination at the beginning of the semester. The next time advanced symmetry and spectroscopy is offered, a final modeling assignment will be created with a rubric that allows the students to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their model. We will abandon "completion of master's thesis" as a learning objective next year. |