The Chemistry Department has always striven to meet the needs of its chemistry students. Environmental topics have been included in both the introductory and upper levels, providing ample opportunity for the students to see how chemistry is used to identify and help solve current environmental problems. Other initiatives include creating a student affiliate chapter of the American Chemical Society, incorporating student-designed experiments into the organic chemistry sequence, introducing spectroscopic and chromatographic instrumentation methods into the introductory courses, and giving students a chance to work and learn in the Analytical Laboratory. The curriculum includes all major areas of chemistry in order to give students a well-rounded chemical background. However, the department has lacked the computers and software that would include a very important area of chemistry molecular modeling in the curriculum. This project remedies this need by providing six CAChe Worksystems running on Power Macintoshes. These workstations greatly increase the molecular modeling capabilities and allow the department to introduce students to this increasingly significant area of chemistry. The long-term development of student expertise in molecular modeling can be monitored from introductory experience with molecular modeling in early courses through ongoing use in upper-level classes. In the new experiments, students learn to (1) use a web browser to find and download chemistry software, (2) visualize molecules in three dimensions, (3) rearrange molecules by rotating and translating, (4) set up and direct chemical calculations by semi-empirical quantum mechanics and molecular dynamics methods, (5) determine optimum geometry, (6) compare and contrast computed and experimental vibrational data, and (7) predict and study reaction mechanisms. *
