The Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois

This program is designed for Ph.D. students who intend to go into academia, especially at colleges and universities in which teaching is an important focus.

Overview

The program has three components: teaching, a research and/or development project, and course work in education

• The teaching component includes progressively greater classroom responsibility and authority as expertise is developed.
• The research and development project includes working on a question of mutual interest to you and your chem ed advisor. Since your chem ed advisor is interested in everything, this gives you great latitude. Outcome: A chapter in your thesis, a refereed paper in a journal and a presentation at a national conference.
• The education course work includes statistics and teaching methods courses, especially Chem 495 methods course.

Timing

The preferred entry point is at the start of your graduate work, when you are taking your area courses and before you start your primary chemistry-based thesis work. It is possible to enter after all of your "wet-lab" experiments and thesis work are complete. We expect you to work in the chem ed program for 18-24 months, including summers, and then in your research group for 3 years.

This means that the chemical education specialization would typically add one extra year to your time-to-degree (5 years vs. 4 years without the specialization).

What You Gain From the Program

You gain the requisite skills and understanding to be a master teacher, as well as conduct research and development projects in chemical education. You also gain a wonderful addition to your resumé, because most academic colleges and universities value professors who can teach and who have an understanding of science education

Your experience in the chemical education specialization program will often be looked upon as the equivalent of an education postdoc because of the leadership that the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has on the international scene in both chemistry and chemical education.

For further information, please contact:

Don DeCoste
107 Chemistry Annex
decoste@uiuc.edu

Please make appointments via e-mail or through Keena Finney, 107 Chem Annex, 333-7227.