Background for the Project

Link to full article in the Journal of Chemical Education or read synopsis below.

Collectively, the authors of this text have spent nearly 90 years teaching in the traditional first-year (general chemistry) and second-year (organic chemistry) sequence. Over that time, our experience showed that capable and motivated students often found chemistry too abstract, too theoretical, and uninspiring. Students would likely finish a year of the traditional curriculum with little or no idea of what most chemists actually do. Even those students who were sufficiently inspired to continue their studies in science beyond organic chemistry apparently made few of the vital connections between the traditional first- and second-year courses. Those reinforcing links, the parallels that were obvious to the teachers, were completely hidden from the students actually going through the process the first time. Our curriculum was tightly bound by disciplinary divisions: intermediate-level inorganic and physical chemistry concepts had to be covered the first year (whether students were prepared to learn them or not); hybridization and molecular structures that were taught the first year were repeated the second year because the compounds contained carbon. We had a curriculum that, although commonly taught across most college campuses, satisfied neither the instructors nor the students.

In place of the traditional curriculum, we dreamed of a course that would bring all the major branches of chemistry into view starting the very first semester; a course that allowed a student to appreciate much of what practicing chemists actually do; a course that led students from observations to theories, not the reverse. We realized, however, that without the appropriate texts, our dream course would never materialize. So we wrote a two-volume, four-semester text from which to teach. Our experience teaching the new curriculum at Illinois Wesleyan, the experience of instructors at other trial sites, and especially the responses from the students involved, indicate that we are definitely on the right track. We hope that, after you check out the project on this web site, you will think so as well.