General Chemistry Reform
For the last two decades, chemists across the nation have expressed serious concerns on the Introductory Chemistry course taught to entering undergraduate science majors.  Several have pointed out that the course could more appropriately be called “Historical Chemistry;” a recent workshop during a national ACS meeting lamented the time spent teaching students information that many professionals consider to be fairly useless.  Countless faculty and students have characterized General Chemistry as a mixed collection of topics that do not fit into a cohesive framework, a stark contrast to the flow of logic that is so apparent in the organic chemistry sequence. The ACS has developed a "Chemistry in Context" book for nonscience majors that examines many important modern topics that ironically receive little, if any, attention in the chemistry texts for science majors.

Over the past two semesters, a personal initiative has been taken to escape “The Tyranny of the Textbook” by developing an Introductory Chemistry sequence of topics that is relevant and interesting, one that represents a logical sequence, and one that stresses the great ideas in modern chemical science.

The Spring 2005 course taught General Chemistry II principles by focusing on biomedical applications and the fundamental chemical principles required to understand important biochemical mechanisms of action.  Inflammation processes and neuroscience were the two major biomedical themes of interest; these provided an effective methodology to implement a biomedically-focused approach. Further information on the specifics of this new framework are available at these General Chemistry II Links:

Gen Chem II Course Description     Lesson Topics     Course Competencies     Review Questions

Gen Chem II Great Ideas in Chemistry     Gen Chem II Great Ideas in Biomedical Science

The Fall 2005 course General Chemistry I course used an "atoms first" approach that eliminated the early chapters often covered to address laboratory requirements.  This provided time necessary to examine nuclear chemistry and thermodynamics building effectively on the "Structure and Energy" thematic focus of  the first semester course.  The chapter on gases was not taught since this material is covered in physics and is heavily emphasized in high school  An extensive sequence on acid-base property dependence upon molecular structure was  included to reinforce concepts of atomic size, electronegativity, charge stability, resonance, and hybridization.  Complex ions normally taught during second semester were covered; this coverage included ligand field splitting to tie together concepts from molecular structure, electron configuration, and electromagnetic radiation.  Further information is available:

Gen Chem I: Structure and Energy

In teaching this sequence, it was clear that students could very effectively benefit from molecular modeling exercises to supplement these lessons; time was often not available to fully incorporate these.