Not your parents’ Chemistry 315

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Students in NC State’s quantitative analysis course (Chemistry 315) returned from their 2011-2012 holiday break to discover quite a gift: a dramatic overhaul of the laboratory space and instrumentation had been completed.

This was a monumental effort that required the efforts of a large number of faculty, staff and students across the Department of Chemistry.

The summary of the project below will be provided to students when they arrive for class in the fall.

Improvements to Laboratory Environment, Instrumentation, and Experiments

There has been a significant amount of effort placed upon increasing the laboratory experience for CH315 students which commenced in the Fall of 2011.

First, the laboratory environment was deemed inadequate to carry out quantitative measurements. The Department of Chemistry used internal resources, by unanimous approval of the faculty advisory committee (Professors Chris Gorman, Laura Sremaniak, Reza Ghiladi, Christian Melander, David Muddiman, and Maria Gallardo-Williams) to renovate the laboratory during the Holiday Break 2011 and this is in large part due to the tireless efforts of Dr. Laura Sremaniak, Associate Chair of Chemistry. Moreover, the entire laboratory had to be emptied of its contents and cleaned which was carried out by the graduate students in Professor David Muddiman’s research group including: Genna Andrews, Hunter Walker, Chris Shuford, Guillaume Robichaud, Samantha Blake, Shan Randall, Kungyen Chang, Amber Cook, Emine Gokce, Jeremy Barry, Angelito Nepomuceno, a graduate student in professor Lin He’s research group, Victoria Brown, and the excellent staff in the department (Alan Harvell, Leonard Page, and Tony Radford). This was a massive effort and above are the before and after pictures to give you a visual of how much was accomplished in such a short period of time.

Second, the instrumentation in the laboratory is recognized as not being state-of-the-art. The department requested ETF funds to improve upon the instrumentation and received $60k in 2011-12. Moreover, a proposal for nearly $100k to North Carolina Biotechnology Center (NCBC) led by Dr. Ghada Rhaba which was funded in the Spring of 2012. Finally, we continue to seek additional funds to improve the educational experience of this laboratory each and every year as needed.

Third, the laboratory experiments and manual underwent significant changes as a direct result of having modern instrumentation available; prior to this, we were limited somewhat by the instrumentation that was present in the laboratory. In the Fall of 2011, Professor Muddiman began the process of writing this new manual (and hopefully improved) including new experiments with quantitative metrics. During the Spring of 2012, Professor Muddiman continued to improve the manual and experiments with the help of the TA’s and Dr. Rabah, especially as new instrumentation arrived in the laboratory. It is important to note that several faculty provided critical editing, suggestions, and/or materials to this new manual including: Professors Ed Bowden, Gufeng Wang, Morteza Khaledi, Adam Hawkridge, and Ken Hanck. Dr. Rabah will continue to evolve the laboratory and experiments over the next few years in collaboration with the analytical chemistry division.