CHEM 289 - Research Methods

By permission only. The course is intended for graduate students and research-active undergraduates in any of the natural science departments.

Fall 2023 Topic -Scientific Writing & Communication - Being able to clearly and effectively communicate scientific and technical information is a skill that is critically important for both academics and professionals. With a focus on practical topics, such as writing research proposals, creating figures and posters to illustrate data, and presenting research results, this interactive course helps science students to develop the skills of written, graphic, and oral communication. A major emphasis is placed on revising documents to better organize their content, which makes it easier for the reader to receive and understand the main messages. A second focus is using effective grammar and graphic design to polish documents into excellent final products.

Fall 2023 Topic - Scientific Data Analysis - Analyzing data is a core component of the scientific method. This course has a practical focus and aims to help research-active science students (newer graduate students and upper level undergraduates) to feel knowledgeable and confident about how they are evaluating the results of their experiments. What conclusions should we draw or not draw from a set of data? How precisely should these conclusions be drawn? How do we model data and how should we compare different models? How should we interpret lines of best fit? How do we make sure we are not over-interpreting our results? These are the types of questions we will ask. Our approach to thinking about these questions will include a mix of computer simulation and theory-based statistics, but no background in either area is required.

Spring 2024 Topic - Scientific Literature Analysis - This course aims to help science students learn how to effectively learn from finding and reading scientific literature. How can we find high-quality scientific literature on a topic of interest? How should we critically read that scientific literature? How can we create effective summaries of what we read? How can we connect together ideas from multiple sources to create broader summaries? How can we effectively present our summaries to peers? This course will begin by building the skills and methods to address these types of questions, and it will then guide students through the creation of a review of a selected literature topic.

 

Prerequisites: By permission only.

Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically