SACSCOC Fifth Year Interim Report
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Assessment : 2013 - 2014 : Educational Programs :
Chemistry MS
Chemistry MS
2 Goals 5 Objectives 5 Indicators 5 Criteria 5 Findings 5 Actions
| GOAL: Develop Presentation Skills |
| Objective |
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Students completing CHEM 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 CHEM 5100 at least once during their tenure as graduate students. To pass CHEM 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 once again used anonymous student evaluation forms for the fall of 2013 (16 students) and again in the spring of 2014 (13 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 for the undergraduate seminar (CHEM 4100). Student comments were variable during this period. This may, in part, be due to an increase in the number of new international students, and a decrease in the number of returning graduate students. The 16 students enrolled in the fall of 2013 included all but one of our graduate students. The 13 students enrolled in the spring of 2014 did not include all of our graduate students. The total number of chemistry graduate students in the spring was 18. The 16 students enrolled in the fall included 7 new graduate students (1 of these was a domestic student). The 5 students who did not 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 documentation of the 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. This action had been planned for this past year, but it was not implemented. |
| GOAL: Deliver A Curriculum With Appropriate Discipline Specific Knowledge |
| Objective |
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Polymer chemistry is a multidisciplinary subfield of chemistry. This graduate level course is organic-chemistry-based although it includes aspects of analytical, biological, inorganic, materials and physical chemistry. The first half of the course involves polymer synthesis presented in lecture format and the second half was split equally between polymer characterization in lecture format and student presentations on an advanced topic related to polymer chemistry. |
| Indicator |
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All students in the class are evaluated by written examination. One exam in the course is based primarily on the key points from the student presentations on advanced topics. |
| Criterion |
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All students will score above one standard deviation below the mean on the advanced topics exam. |
| Finding |
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| During the Fall 2013 semester, 88% of the students scored higher than one standard deviation below the mean. |
Actions for Objective:
| Action |
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| The next time this course is offered, students will be required to evaluate and summarize the key points of their peers' advanced topic presentations. These evaluations and summaries will be posted anonymously for the whole class to view. In this way, the students will be more engaged in the presentations and the key points will be more apparent to all students. |
| GOAL: Deliver A Curriculum With Appropriate Discipline Specific Knowledge |
| Objective |
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CHEM 5374 "Chemistry of Coordination Compounds" is a course about transition metal complexes. An understanding of the nature of the metal-ligand bond is essential for students to address the rest of the material in the course. |
| Indicator |
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Graduate students in this course will demonstrate their mastery of the sigma only molecular orbital energy diagram for an octahedral metal complex by constructing such a diagram on an examination given the group theory character tables and the appropriate symmetries of the ligand orbitals. |
| Criterion |
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Over 90% of the students will score over 3 on a 5 point scale on the question "Draw a full molecular orbital energy diagram for M(NH~3)~6^n+ where M^n+ is a transition metal. The symmetries of the lone pairs of ammonia are a~1g, e~g, and t~1u." |
| Finding |
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| Thirteen students scored 5 on the question. Two scored 4 and one scored 2. Thus 15/16 = 94% scored above a 3. The criterion was met. |
Actions for Objective:
| Action |
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| The criterion was met and this material will be emphasized through the use of homework assignments on the construction of molecular orbital energy diagrams the next time the course is offered. |
| GOAL: Deliver A Curriculum With Appropriate Discipline Specific Knowledge |
| Objective |
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Physical organic chemistry is a field of organic chemistry that looks at the physical aspects (heat, light, stereochemistry, bond strengths, acidity, etc.) of bond formation and bond cleavage. This field had its beginnings in the 1930s and is useful to chemists as we try to address problems important in health care, food chemistry, synthesis, photophysical processes, and biochemical research. |
| Indicator |
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All students in the class are given problem sets to strengthen their understanding of physical aspects of organic chemistry, and to become cognizant of common research approaches to this field through published material on the changes of reactivity with changes in experimental reaction conditions. Competence is demonstrated by correct assessment of 90% of the assigned problems. |
| Criterion |
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Exam scores will be used to assess student understanding of the fundamental concepts of the course. These are the experimental results upon changes in reaction conditions (heat, or light). Additional homework may be assigned to those students who show some deficiencies in certain areas. Arriving at the same conclusions of the questions as the authors of the homework assignments will be used to judge the assigned homework. |
| Finding |
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| During the Spring 2014 semester, all students showed a grasp and use of the fundamental concepts of this field as applied to approaches to determining mechanisms of organic reactions on assignments during the course. These were realized by changes in chemistry with respect to structure-reactivity phenomena. |
Actions for Objective:
| Action |
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| During the next course offering, peer evaluations of student presentations will be used to address the understanding and dissemination of fundamental concepts common to this field. |
| GOAL: Deliver A Curriculum With Appropriate Discipline Specific Knowledge |
| Objective |
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The course discusses the development of biologically active molecules and antagonists, through the exploration of the state of the art in drug antidotal therapy that employs the addition of exogenous metabolizing enzymes to destroy toxic molecules (e.g. chemical warfare agents) in the body and discussion of drug development following the approach of "Molecules from the Research Labs to the Hands of Doctors to Treat Diseases and Chemical Intoxications." |
| Indicator |
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All students in the class are evaluated by a final written comprehensive examination. |
| 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 the comprehensive final test. |
| Finding |
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| During the spring 2014 semester, 18 students took the course (two were from the forensic science M.S. program and the rest were graduate students in chemistry). Ninety-four percent of the students (17 out of 18) met the criterion. |
Actions for Objective:
| Action |
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| The next time the course is offered, there will be an increased emphasis on complex problem solving of tasks related to the objective through the use of individual homework and group classroom assignments. |
| Previous Cycle's "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. |
| Update on Previous Cycle's "Plan for Continuous Improvement" |
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Regarding the seminar, the instructor forgot to provide sample critiques and comments.
For the four courses, they were not offered during the 2013-2014 year, so the changes could not be implemented this year, which is why the previous cycle's plan stated "the next time...is offered". Completion of the thesis was removed as a learning objective. |
| Plan for Continuous Improvement |
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The master's program is different than our undergraduate programs in a variety of ways. Most importantly for assessment purposes, with the exception of our seminar class (CHEM 5100), graduate research (CHEM 6398) and thesis (CHEM 6099), our courses are not offered every year. They aren't necessarily offered every other year--the frequency varies based on the instructors other demands and the needs of the students in the program.
For the seminar, sample critiques and comments will be provided at the beginning of the course. For the course on polymer chemistry, the next time the course is offered, the instructor will require students to evaluate and summarize their peers' presentations, and these will be shared anonymously to the whole class. For CHEM 5374, the next time the course is offered, the instructor will emphasize how students should create a sigma only molecular orbital energy diagram for octahedral metal complexes through homework assignments. For physical organic chemistry, the next time the course is offered, the instructor will require peer evaluation of student presentations. For industrial biochemistry, the next time the course is offered, the instructor will increase the emphasis on complex problem solving through the use of individual homework and group classroom assignments. |