George Sanzone Virginia Polytechnic Institute 8 State Universitv Blacksburg. 2 4 m i
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Undergraduate Research in Chemistry A liberal a*
Part of the . ournose . for teaching chemistrv to non-chemistw majors is to provide a clear picture of just what chemistry is and of how it contributes to an understanding of our physical and social world. In the program we dsscrihe helow, the basic assumption is made that chemistry is a liberal arts suhject. Undergraduate Research a s a Liberal Arts Subject During the past six years, the author has supervised the undergraduate research of 44 students from 16 disciplines for over 200 quarter credit hours of work in chemistry. (See the table., The theme of this work has heen that chemistrv is indeed liberal arts subject. But it is not the studiing of chemistry, it is the doing of chemistry which elevates it to this level. Consequently, we have tried to share the research experience with any qualified student who wants it, no matter what the student's major field of study or academic level. While in our lab, the math major remains a math major; the chemistry he does is tailored toshow him how math is applied in chemistry; similarly with the other disciplines. The result has been the development of a unique interdisciplinary group atmosphere which has benefited both chemists and nonchemists alike. The success of this program is reflected not only in the number of students who have participated, hut also in the number of student-presented papers which we list in the Appendix. But this success has hinged, we believe, on our recognition of a new definition of undergraduate research. For if research is the purposeful extension of the frontiers of knowledge, then undergraduate research may not always he research in this sense. The reason is that the frontier of the student may not he that of the suhject. In fact, no two of my 44 undergraduate researchers started a t the same frontier. And, indeed, if we are a t all successful, the student's level advances during his study. But with our definition of undergraduate research as students working a t their individual frontiers, the chemistry research experience becomes available to any student from freshman to senior and from agriculture to zoology.
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The Selection of a Research Project There are certain natural constraints on the selection of a t our moun. First and foremost. the student research ~ r o i e cin must find th"e project i
