The project's main objective is to give students in the Microscale Organic Laboratory experience with a Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer so as to better prepare them for careers as scientists and/or science teachers. The diverse student population that will benefit from the project includes over 30% Black and Hispanic students and over 60% female students. In the Microscale Organic Laboratory, the spectrometer will be used by students week after week to analyze products and characterize unknowns. This will give them concrete reinforcement of lecture topics related to infrared spectroscopy. Interested students will analyze byproducts of the reactions they run, and will be asked to adapt a synthetic route found in the literature to the microscale level. Among other ways, the impact of the project will be evaluated by monitoring student progress throughout their post community college education. The emergence of microscale chemistry over the past decade has led to a regular feature on the subject in the Journal of Chemical Education. This is an excellent forum where successes from the project, such as new or adapted microscale techniques, will be disseminated to the scientific community.
