Colleagues,

I love crystal field theory, but I would like to try and extend this idea to the f-orbitals. We know how the d-orbitals split in an a variety of environments, but how do the f orbitals split?  I want to develop an assignment for my students where they can use their knowledge from the d-orbitals to think about how the f-orbitals would split. Any ideas? I know CFT is not as important for the lanthanides, but I think it could be an interesting extension to what students typically learn about CFT.

My wife (a high school math teacher and huge graphing calculator supporter) was asked by one of her science colleagues (not a graphing calculator fan) what kind of policies there were in colleges about calculator use in chemistry classes in particular. I knew immediately where to go to get answers. As inorganic chemists there is a good chance we spend some time teaching gen. chem. (if your school has such a beast). I was just curious as to what kind of calculator policy (if any) other places had.

We previously had only one semester of inorganic chemistry, and now we are adding a "foundational" course to conform to ACS guidelines.  Because some of the descriptive chemistry of the elements is covered in general chemistry (and frankly can often be quite boring for students) we decided to replace that material with bioinorganic applications in our foundational course, in the hope that both chemistry majors and bio majors/chem minors will enjoy it.

We are significantly changing both our course and lab curriculum.  One of our goals is to break down barriers between inorganic, organic and biochemistry by treating similar topics in each at the same time rather than in three different courses.   For example, one of the lab courses focuses on the use of different types of chromatography used in the three fields.

Has anyone used the "Voices of Inorganic Chemistry" videos in their teaching?  Its a relatively new feature from the Journal Inorg. Chem., and I just learned more about them at the Organometallic Gordon Conference.  Here is the link. If you have used them, I'd love to hear about how it worked.

Adam

I am teaching a course this fall on writing in chemistry and will have a short section covering grant proposals.  I am planning to have the students form small "study sessions" to critique and review grant proposals to give them a sense of what goes into a grant proposal and have them determine for themselves what works and what doesn't.

I ask for help from the VIPEr community again.  I have naively agreed to teach a special topics group theory course to two of our departments BS/MS degree students.  It is an independant study course that is supposed to cover group theory more indepth than what they would have recieved in their BS coursework.

I have developed over the years an upper level (junior and senior level) materials chemistry course that has become part of our regular curriculum at Williams College.  The course has taken many different forms over the years and has evolved over time.

I am excited to report that my department is moving to a two-course inorganic sequence. We have always taught "Advanced Inorganic Chemistry" without an official introductory course. Now we will also have a "foundations" level course. My "problem" is that in this upcoming semester, Fall 2011, the two courses will be cross-listed and the lecture part will meet simultaneously. This is a one-time arrangement; after Fall 2011, the courses will be distinct. We have two populations of students that are enrolled under different graduation requirements, but we cannot staff two courses this year.

Several IONiC members were meeting at Smith College and the topic of rubrics came up. I'm always looking for better ways to evaluate student work. Scott Williams mentioned that he had rubric for grading posters and Adam Johnson said he had one for grading student theses. I have an oral presentation from (that I'm in the process of revising). I was hoping that people would be willing to share their rubrics so that we have good starting places from which to work.

Please consider by sharing your rubrics, your thoughts on developing them, etc.