On Friday, November 7th, Dr. Alex Poniatowski led a discussion on the philosophical and practical thought processes going into redesigning the general chemistry laboratory CHEM 125/126 at U of M. The course, which has a high enrollment of freshmen, is potentially the only laboratory course students take with the department.

Keeping that in mind, Dr. Poniatowski designed the course with four philosophies: everyone is a teacher and students are encouraged to be collaborative, the course should help people improve themselves, the experiments should be grounded in the scientific method, and the fine details of the course are negotiable. The discussion included implementation of each philosophy into the structure of the course.

Submitted by Danielle Zurcher