Why Did We Change Our Curriculum?
Starting in the fall of 1993, Juniata's chemistry department launched a curricular experiment which is, to our knowledge, unique in the nation. The change came after many years of dissatisfaction with the traditional freshman and sophomore chemistry courses and after several years of discussion, research, and soul-searching within the faculty. The dissatisfactions included:
- The tremendous diversity in the subjects freshman chemistry traditionally attempts to cover: students saw the course as dealing with one thing one week, then jumping abruptly to another unrelated subject, and then to a third, with no common thread linking the various sections.
- Most freshmen have already encountered the material of a traditional freshman chemistry course in high school.
- Many students bring with them such poor backgrounds in mathematics that the manipulations called for in a traditional freshman course prove frustrating, and they never seriously consider concepts underlying the numerical solutions to problems.
- Some students are significantly better prepared than others, so it is difficult for faculty to pitch the freshman course at an appropriate level, a problem that in our experience persists even after diverting the top third of the class to an honors section.
- A traditional organic chemistry course goes far beyond the desires and needs of the majority of its clientele in some respects, while falling quite short in others.
- We believe we should do justice to the fact that most of the students electing organic chemistry are biology majors and premedical students with no need for learning about many of the things normally covered.