Using Modules to Teach General Chemistry

The institutional setting for this case is the University of Saint Thomas (UST) in St. Paul, Minnesota. With an enrollment of nearly 11,000 students, UST is Minnesota's largest independent institution. As its name change from the College of Saint Thomas in 1990 might suggest, UST is an institution in flux-trying to hold onto its heritage as a Catholic liberal arts college while expanding and reorganizing to meet a major metropolitan area's growing need for professional and graduate education. St. Thomas now offers 45 graduate programs, most of which have been established during the past 20 years; its graduate school of business enrolls more than 3,000 students, making it the fourth-largest graduate business school in the U.S. At an institution that sees itself as being a Catholic liberal-arts college, roughly a third of its undergraduates are business majors. The College began admitting women in 1977, and women are now (2001-2002) a majority of its students (54%). Graduate students, most of whom attend part time, now make up more than half of the institution's total enrollment (5,600 of 11,000 students). St. Thomas currently employs approximately 380 full-time and 400 part-time faculty.

The Department of Chemistry at St. Thomas
Currently, the UST Department of Chemistry offers only an undergraduate curriculum, leading to either a BA degree or an American Chemical Society-certified BS degree, the latter being recommended to students planning on graduate study or advanced research in academic, industrial, or government laboratories. St. Thomas also offers a BS in biochemistry, which is an interdisciplinary program that draws upon faculty and courses from the Departments of Biology and Chemistry.

The Department of Chemistry includes between 12-14 full-time faculty and 2 support staff. Its faculty specialize in such areas as organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, analytical chemistry, physical chemistry, and polymer chemistry. On average, the department has about 15 majors.

The department is housed in a building opened in 1997 with the very latest laboratory designs, equipment, and instrumentation. While it is an advantage to the chemistry faculty to have such modern facilities and equipment, they also feel a subtle pressure to use such resources to do more and better research. As Dean of the [Undergraduate] College, Tom Connery, pointed out, there is a tacit expectation of the institution, placed in turn on the chemistry department, that "you've built this state-of-the-art science building...make sure you do something with it."

The course that is the focus of this case study is Chemistry 111, which is described in the UST catalog as this:

CHEM 111 General Chemistry I (100) 4 credit(s)

This course and its sequence 112 provide a two-semester introduction to chemistry. Topics include atomic structure, molecular structure, chemical bonding, the periodic table, states of matter, reactions (types, energy changes, equilibrium and rates), properties of the common elements and their ions in aqueous solution, electrochemistry and nuclear chemistry. Lecture plus four laboratory hours per week. Prerequisite(s): Math placement at 108 or above; if placement is lower than 108, registration must be for section 31 (extended).

This course is the first in the curriculum sequence taken by chemistry majors. It enrolls approximately 250 students the semester it is taught. Scores on a math exam are used to place students. The top 20 students are put in an honors section, and the bottom 20 students or so who don't make the cut score must enroll in a special section that meets during the January session, between Fall and Spring semesters; this additional section gives students more time to work on study skills and math skills. The remaining students are placed in 3 sections of roughly 75 students each, thus giving Chem 111 a total of five sections.