This is a list of all of the learning objects developed in association with the 2023 content building workshop. Prof. Robert Gilliard was the featured speaker for this workshop, so most of the LOs will focus on his work.
The "Lit Masters" concept is inspired by and adapted from one of my colleagues, Jenn Manak, in our education department. Students who are novices to reading the literature often are overwhelmed when assigned a paper to read and may struggle in group discussions. The strategy is to assign students to a semester-long group with designated roles for each paper that require them to produce a low-stakes artifact prior to class. During class time groups discuss the paper and it is followed with a debrief.
Students perform weekly laboratory experiments to explore and apply concepts covered in the lecture
component of the course.
This course focuses on the chemistry of the elements, including electronic structure, bonding and
molecular structure, ionic solids, coordination compounds, the origins of the elements, and the descriptive
chemistry of the elements. Topics also include inorganic synthesis, materials science, industrial chemistry,
and an introduction to bioinorganic chemistry.
CHEM 4310 is an in-depth review of modern inorganic chemistry. Topics will include symmetry, acids and bases, reduction-oxidation reactions, periodic trends, coordination chemistry, organometallic chemistry, bioinorganic chemistry, and material chemistry. The course will meet for three hours of lecture and three hours of laboratory per week.
Materials Chemistry will explore many of the fundamental relationships between a material’s chemical structure and the subsequent interesting and useful properties that result. In order for advances in electronic, magnetic, optical, and other niche applications to be made, an understanding of the structure-property relationship in these materials is crucial. This course will emphasize inorganic systems, and topics will include descriptions of various modern inorganic solid-s
This literature discussion focuses on a 2022 Nature Comm paper looking at the reasons behind the pyramidal structures of tri-coordinate f-element complexes. There is plenty to discuss in terms of bonding and coordination geometries in metal complexes, and the effects of pressure on coordination geometry.
This literature discussion focuses on a Inorg. Chem. article that describes a series of Pt complexes that exhibit competitive reductive elimination reactions to form either an sp2-sp3 bond or an sp3-sp3 bond. One of the complexes also contains a C-C agostic interaction with the metal. The questions are written to be addressed by students in a foundation-level inorganic course.
The second in a series on teaching advanced topics to undergraduates, the SLiThEr focuses on organoMetallic chemistry. While the primary framework for the discussion is my senior level course, there is plenty of great content from the live participants.
In fall 2022, May Nyman from Oregon State was awarded the F. Albert Cotton Award in Synthetic Inorganic Chemistry for her outstanding accomplishments in synthesis and development of polyoxometalates and metal oxohydroxoclusters, including their structures, speciation, reaction mechanisms, and function. In this literature discussion, students will examine her recent paper “Differentiating Zr/Hf Aqueous Polyoxocation Chemistry with Peroxide Ligation," Inorg. Chem. 2021, 60, 1631-1640 which is related to that work.