On Friday, October 24, 2014, 30 graduate students, post-docs and professors discussed three literature papers on the topic of carrying out real research in undergraduate laboratory classes. Two of the papers discussed gave examples of doing collaborative research in upper level undergraduate laboratories. Heidi Phillips, above, presented on Distributed Drug Discovery, a global laboratory activity developed at IUPUI by Professor Martin O’Donnell. The third paper analyzed the impact that doing real research had on students 2-3 years after they had taken the course. Discussion centered on the difficulties of doing real research in a setting with novices along with the compromises one may have to make to carry out this type of research with large class sizes.

Our next event, on Nov. 7th will continue this discussion as Dr. Alex Poniatowski will present/lead a discussion on his current efforts to incorporate real research into the general chemistry laboratory course (CHEM 125/126) at U-M.

submitted by Danielle Zurcher