Teaching undergraduate chemistry through fibers and dyes

ABSTRACT

Teaching chemistry in the context of another subject area—such as the arts—can make abstract chemical concepts more accessible to students. CHM 351 Fibers & Dyes at Wake Forest University and CHE 106 Dyeing to Learn Chemistry at Davidson College are both courses with lecture and laboratory components that frame chemistry in the context of fibers and dyes. However, they are designed with different student populations in mind. CHM 351 is an upper-level course that has four semesters of chemistry as a prerequisite and counts as an elective course within the chemistry major, while CHE 106 is a non-natural science major’s laboratory course with no prerequisites. This chapter will describe the design, execution, and assessment of undergraduate dye chemistry courses first for the upper-level major’s course, and then for the non-natural science major’s course. Then, the similarities and differences between approaches for each set of students will be examined. Consideration will also be given to adaptations that were made as a result of remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2021 American Chemical Society.