9455570 Chapman The UCLA Science Challenge began in 1991 as a five-year program with a mission to bring innovative, research-level instruction to undergraduates, particularly lower division students in order to retain lower-division science majors, recruit new science majors, attract more minority students to science, and to improve student attitudes toward science. The goal is to infuse every lower division course in the physical sciences with new material and to create new interdisciplinary courses that reflect the breadth and overlap of the physical and life science disciplines. As we enter the fourth year of the program, we are on target to meet our charge. During the first half of the project, we primarily attacked both the largest general education classes in the division, the Astronomy and Atmospheric Science courses, which collectively enroll 8000 non-science majors each year, and also courses for the physical science majors in Chemistry and Physics. Our major focus now will be on the Physics course for Life Science majors. Our minor focus, for the enormous General Chemistry course that all Life Science and Physical Science majors must take, will concentrate on modules that allow students to visualize 3-dimensional molecular and crystalline structures. We will keep a small presence in the Earth and Space Science department, in Astronomy, and in Atmospheric Science in order to maintain the coherence of the renovation of the Physical Sciences at UCLA and to fulfill our commitment to complete the modules which these departments have begun.
