This Nanotechnology in Undergraduate Education (NUE) award to Professor Russell G. Larsen at the University of Iowa is made by the Division of Chemistry in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences and the Division of Undergraduate Education in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources to support the development of new instructional materials designed to introduce students to the fundamentals of chemistry, nanoscience, and nanotechnology. These new materials will be implemented into the Technology and Society laboratory and Principles of Chemistry I and II. The intellectual focus of the laboratory experiments are on the dependence of the optical properties of semiconductor quantum dots on nanometer changes in size and how these nanomaterials can be used to illuminate the principles of nanoscience and nanotechnology. The goals are to educate students who are non-science majors to be scientifically literate and to educate students who are majoring in science, engineering or medicine to be a capable and knowledgeable nanotechnology workforce in the future.
The proposed project will directly impact a large number of undergraduates at the University of Iowa. These students will benefit from the new experiments related to nanoscience and nanotechnology that will be implemented into the curriculum starting in Fall 2004. The end result of this project will be the education of the future nanotechnology workforce by introducing them to the concepts of nanoscience at an early stage of their undergraduate career and the education of scientifically literate citizens who will be able to make informed decisions with respect to nanotechnology. The educational materials will be broadly disseminated and readily available to other chemical educators for implementation in analogous courses.
