The concepts of molecular bonding, electronic structure, molecular orbitals, and intermolecular and intramolecular interactions are fundamental to all areas of chemistry. Although these concepts have been covered at several levels of sophistication in various chemistry courses, they have not been well understood by the majority of students. The problem that students have had with understanding these concepts arises from the difficult task of visualizing these concepts in the microscopic world of atoms and molecules. Recent advances in molecular modeling, computational chemistry, and 3-D visualization software provide an exciting opportunity to more effectively teach these critical concepts in an innovative way. These advances, coupled with relatively powerful and affordable computer workstations, and superb graphic software and hardware, make this approach viable. For years, molecular modeling has played a significant role in chemical and pharmaceutical designs in both industry and graduate-level researah. Now is the time to incorporate molecular modeling into the undergraduate curriculum to help students better comprehend critical structural concepts. To achieve this goal, the department is purchasing 14 computers and one SGI workstation, which can be interconnected and can support SPARTAN software. This new facility is enabling chemistry faculty to teach molecular modeling and computational chemistry to students in a meaningful way, and it is enabling students to visualize a number of fundamental microscopic concepts that are important to the macroscopic properties of materials.
