Maintaining Undergraduate Labs During Difficult Times

It has been almost two years of tumultuous ups and downs and our lives have been thrown into chaos as we have lived in the indefinite fear of the unknown. UC San Diego’s biggest unknown was how to navigate the uncertainty of our new reality of remote, socially distanced learning. The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry jumped into action at the start of the pandemic by embracing the new student experience of remote learning whole heartedly to ensure the safety of our students, while still encouraging their growth. One of the biggest challenges, however, was figuring out how to support the undergraduate teaching labs during this transition. It is in large part due to the commitment and resilience of our staff and teaching assistants that our undergraduate teaching labs have been able to thrive so efficiently during the confusing and ever-changing constraints of our new Covid reality. Professor Brian Leigh directly attributes the success of Chem 7L to the phenomenal TA’s that help teach the course. “The TAs accommodated students with synchronous-remote sections from 8 AM to 10 PM PST so that no matter where on the planet a student was learning from, there was a live TA in a Zoom room waiting to interact with them during the student’s normal waking hours. On top of this, the TA’s added to 7L by making laboratory videos, oral quiz assessments, and normalized TA instructional material across all 28 sections. The TAs had a huge hand in success of this course.” Professor Haim Weizman shared similar sentiments for his lab staff. “Before Winter ‘22 we have found that 2/3 of the students didn’t have prior in-person lab experience. This is very problematic since this advanced lab relies on skills that students develop over two previous labs. To ensure students’ success and safety, we designed a new experiment that would allow students to practice crucial techniques. Lab staff member Cindy Tran worked very hard to test the protocol and organize the labs in a timely manner. Her ingenuity and dedication are admirable.” Additionally, the teaching lab staff stepped-in as needed to provide laboratory videos and data for upper-level lab courses, optional hands-on experiences for students in select labs and assistance for new faculty and lab instructors in transitioning courses to remote format. Professor Dontarie Stallings reflected on the difficulties that remote learning gave his Chem 108 course, and how with the help of teaching lab staff they were able to overcome them. “Mary Server, Peter Wortuba and I collaborated to redesign the student learning experience —overcoming the remote learning constraints while piloting a Course Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs). The preparatory work by Peter and Mary was both substantial and effective. CUREs allow students to use historical data to generate hypothetical outcomes. The students then test these outcomes and disseminate their respective result. Due to the collaboration with Peter and Mary, each student was able to work on the same 5 week project with unique and authentic data. This collaboration has demonstrated the effectiveness of CUREs and given our department an additional quiver in our teaching portfolio.” Professor Jeremy Klosterman shared praise for his teaching lab staff Cindy, “We would not have been able to give chem majors the opportunity to try out the CHEM143B experiments without her. Not only did Cindy set up and organize the chemicals and equipment for each experiment, she also worked with Dr. Sever to ensure a safe lab environment that followed COVID protocols. Cindy was there every lab section to help the TAs and students carry out the experiments. Her help was greatly appreciated as most of the bootcamp students had taken 7L and 43A online and were working in lab for the very first time. Best of all, Cindy was enthusiastic about the whole experience and I’m sure she always had a smile under her mask.” We are so thankful for the dedication of our staff and teaching assistants who meet issues with flexibility and are always willing to accommodate these constant changes. Your efforts and successes do not go unnoticed.