Every time I reflect on my teaching of inorganic chemistry, I always think of the turning points I have experienced along the journey of learning inorganic chemistry. To be honest, I was not an A student at all when I took Inorganic Chemistry in my first year of college as a chemical engineering major. The professor thought that this course was not important for the chemical engineering major and I was overwhelmed by more than 70 slides in a one-hour-lecture. Interestingly, I transitioned to physical chemistry major in my graduate school where I learnt quantum chemistry (at both undergraduate and graduate levels) and became so interested in the topics of electrons, atoms, wavefunctions, symmetry and orbitals. The positive learning experience brought by my professors and the research interest in metal nanoparticles seeded my passion for inorganic chemistry.

I never thought I would teach inorganic chemistry until I gave a teaching demo on “hard soft acid and base” in my job interview. I was super nervous but the students who interacted with me gave me a lot of confidence. That 30-minute demo lecture became the starting point of my journey of teaching inorganic chemistry. As a new faculty, I spent a lot of efforts and time developing the new course, organizing every piece of material and attending different workshops on teaching to be a good teacher. All the things I learnt from these workshops on teaching and learning organized by SEPAL and CEETL at SFSU was eye-opening experience to me.

By the time I got a little experience of teaching inorganic chemistry a few times, my chair told me about the exciting opportunity of becoming a VIPEr fellow. I did not know too much about it but I believed it would help me to improve my teaching. I was excited about it and the COVID impacted everyone’s life. When I collected the teaching data in my classroom, our institution was still in the remote instruction mode and I had to record my Zoom lectures instead of the in-person ones. I was also suffering from the early pregnancy symptoms while delivering my lectures, which was quite challenging for me.

After finishing the summer workshop, I feel so fortunate and inspiring that I know more folks with the same enthusiasm who cares about the education and teaching inorganic chemistry. Although I heard about COPUS I never used it. Understanding my teaching style with this tool feels so cool. All the new information I learnt in the past weekend makes me energetic mentally now to think about how to teach my inorganic chemistry course in the coming fall semester. I try to envision the freshman version of me sitting in the classroom who does not major in chemistry and who has no idea what inorganic chemistry is. I would like to show all my students regardless of their majors that inorganic chemistry could be fun. Along this journal of teaching inorganic chemistry, I would keep seeking inspirations and support from our IONiC community.