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In CHEM 146, a capstone course for chemistry majors at San José State University, I run a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) developed in collaboration with many members of the IONiC VIPEr community. This CURE starts with every student in the lab developing and presenting their proposed project to the class (described in a separate LO) and then "fund" (pursue) the top rated proposals in groups of 2 or 3 students. Each project addresses the same overarching scientific aim: to test two (or more) related transition metal complexes for catalytic activity in the oxidation of 3,5-di-tert-butylcatechol (3,5-DTBC) to 3,5-di-tert-butylquinone (3,5-DTBQ).
The project phase of the CURE is run over the final 7 weeks of the semester with student groups determining their day by day activities. As the instructor, I do informal check-ins with each group at the start of every lab period and throughout the day as needed. The class meets every Friday from 9 am - 3:40 pm. There are 4 assessments for the project portion of the CURE, described below.
- Final project discussion (due 3/27)
- to help prepare you for the CURE project work, including troubleshooting
- the first day of the project phase of the CURE is used as a planning day for each of the teams after the proposals have been chosen so that all of the necessary chemicals and equipment can be acquired and the timing of different experiments can be discussed
- Lab Safety, Technique, and Notebook assessment (throughout project phase of the CURE)
- to demonstrate growth in your laboratory practice relative over the course of the semester
- Final presentation (during class 5/8)
- to present your results collaboratively and get additional practice giving presentations as well as a chance to implement the feedback from your proposal presentation
- Final report (due 5/18)
- a culmination of the CURE and an opportunity to write collaboratively about your project
Course learning outcomes covered in the project phase of the CURE.
Students will be able to
CLO 2: Determine, execute, and troubleshoot synthetic and analytical experimental procedures found in the scientific literature safely and efficiently.
CLO 3: Evaluate and discuss the results of a project.
UV-vis spectrophotometer and standard chemical synthesis equipment including a fume hood are required, but this project can also benefit from a wide variety of instrumentation including (but not limited to) NMR and IR spectroscopy and XRD.
The informal in-class check-ins with the students were absolutely essential to students' forward progress in their CURE projects, especially in providing mentorship for troubleshooting.
I also found it helpful to set the expectation early that finishing was less important than forward progress so that students were less stressed overall. As this is within a capstone class, this also allowed us to have more fun and talk about things beyond the course more.
Some of the proposed experiments involved a decent amount of waiting, so sometimes delaying seminar an hour so that all the groups could get to a waiting point meant a lot for the efficiency and productivity of their lab day.
Having students track autoxidation of 3,5-DTBC under their reaction conditions was very important because autoxidation can be significant and is dependent on the conditions employed for the catalytic trials (ref: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsomega.5c07532). Note that beyond this reference, my students in 2026 found that autoxidation in acetonitrile was even more than that in methanol.
See attachments for various assignments and notes.
General notes about the course
At SJSU, upper division undergraduate courses are numbered from 100-199 and graduate courses are numbered 200-299. This course is CHEM 146, and it is expected to be taken in Spring semester of a student's senior year, or, if the student will be graduating in Fall semester, students may take it in the Spring semester prior to gradation. Rarely, a junior doing inorganic before physical chemistry will take it in their junior year. This course does not rely on physical chemistry as a prerequisite, so students have been successful with this path as well. CHEM 145, the inorganic lecture course, which I also typically teach, is a prerequisite to this laboratory course. CHEM 146 is the only inorganic laboratory course currently offered at SJSU. It is only offered in Spring semester and has had between 6 and 16 students enrolled (from Spring 2018 to Spring 2026) with 11 students in the most recent run of the course, which these materials reflect.
Evaluation
See attachments for various assignments and notes.
Student projects achieved varied levels of success, but everyone was able to synthesize, characterize, and test at least one metal complex. At the end of the course, students presented their project results including the synthesis of novel complexes, characterization of those complexes including some crystal structures, and catalytic testing for 3,5-DTBC oxidation including autoxidation controls. Over three iterations of this CURE project groups have generally, but not universally, worked well together and produced results they got excited about.