The pandemic posed countless challenges, including the logistics and safety of teaching and performing chemistry in lab classes. When classes shifted last March from in-person to remote instruction, faculty and staff had to figure out how to provide students with a supervised, safe, hands-on learning experience.
The department of chemistry responded by assembling more than 1,000 at-home chemistry kits for students enrolled in introductory general and organic chemistry. They developed at-home lab experiments and identified less hazardous chemicals to use while maintaining the learning objectives.
Students were encouraged to conduct their experiments on Zoom, in case they encountered problems.