Bringing the excitement of biological research into the chemistry classroom at MIT.

A ll Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) undergraduates are required to take introductory chemistry, which means that their willing or unwilling ears are ours for a full semester. MIT therefore has the unique opportunity to instill an appreciation of chemical principles in every incoming student, including those who left high school with an ambivalent or negative view of chemistry. Two classes within the chemistry department fulfill MIT’s basic chemistry requirement, with the more advanced course attracting the majority of those students already excited about chemistry. Here, we discuss our plans for the other course, Principles of Chemical Science 5.111, which is composed of students who are generally not planning on chemistry or engineering majors, 25% of each freshman class. Among this group, there is considerable interest in biology. Many students express a passion for cancer research and the biology of disease but claim they “hate chemistry”. Few understand that chemical reactions are at the heart of biological processes, from the workings of a cell to the inhibition of cancer targets. By demonstrating the relationship between chemistry and biology, we hope to harness the students’ enthusiasm for biology and medicine to increase their interest in andunderstanding of chemistry. This enriched introductory chemistry course is central to a larger initiative, funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Professors Program, aimed at increasing the understanding of chemical principles among biology students and demonstrating the vital connection between biology and chemistry. Similar to the overall program goals, our hope for the course is to foster an understanding of chemistry’s relevance by illuminating the centrality of chemistry in biological and medicinal research. Although scattered biological examples have been part of our curriculum for several years, this fall will mark the first full run of the more biologically focused course. In this article, we outline the changes that have been implemented and the feedback we have thus far received. With an assessment plan in place, we look forward to reporting successes and pitfalls as the program continues. Course Material. In compiling biologically enriched material for the freshman chemistry course, our intent is not to create a combined chemistry and biology course or even to change the current curriculum, which has been set by the MIT chemistry department. Instead, our approach is to invigorate the lectures and associated problem sets with biological examples that illustrate each concept presented. We hope that the placement of relevant examples and research applications of a given chemical principle will give new context to the course material. This approach has already been implemented on a smaller scale by presenting several biological examples per semester that bring the excitement of research into the classroom. For example, in teaching about the 3D *Corresponding author, [email protected].