9354515 Caffery The goal of this project is to develop materials which will integrate molecular modeling into the chemistry curriculum as a means of understanding chemical structure and as a tool for developing critical thinking skills. The plan will involve students in using this tool while emphasizing thinking skills from simple analysis and comparison through inference and finally, synthesis of results and evaluation of findings. The approach is innovative in that it calls for integration of the techniques across the major program rather than use in isolated experiments and exercises developed and used by individual faculty members. It provides a creative means of explicitly developing thinking skills and for fostering team work. This project will focus primarily on courses taken by first and second year chemistry and biology majors and will include selected upper division courses in which the technique has significant applications. We also believe that non-science majors can learn to model simple molecules and have included them in our design. They will learn science by "doing what scientists do." ***y
