Writing Equals Communicating by Jennifer Chaytor

Writing Equals Communicating Jennifer Chaytor Associate Professor of Chemistry Winner of the 2020 Franc A. Landee Award for Excellence in Teaching

Jennifer Chaytor has been teaching at SVSU since 2012. Her main teaching responsibilities are organic chemistry lectures and laboratories and a biochemistry survey course. Chaytor received a bachelor of science with honours in biochemistry from Brock University in Ontario, Canada, in 2005. She then completed a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 2010 from the University of Ottawa (Ontario, Canada) and a post-doctoral position in medicinal chemistry at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, before joining the Chemistry Department at SVSU. Chaytor has developed an active undergraduate research program at SVSU, emphasizing both bioorganic chemistry and chemistry education. She has published articles in several peerreviewed journals, including the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Letters, Carbohydrate Research, and the Journal of Chemical Education.

Chaytor has received 1st State Bank’s 2019 RUBY Award in the Great Lakes Bay Region. (This annual award honors the “area’s brightest professionals under the age of 40 who have made their mark in their professions and are having an impact throughout the Great Lakes Bay Region.”) Also the recipient of the SVSU Undergraduate Research Program Faculty Mentor Award (in 2017), she is currently the co-coordinator of the Dow Science and Sustainability Education Center Summer Internship Program at SVSU.

When students first register for my organic chemistry courses, they typically have a lot of concerns. Organic chemistry has a reputation for being “horrible,” “incredibly difficult,” and “full of memorization.” Subsequently, I spend a good part of my courses convincing the students (I hope) that these concerns aren’t (totally) accurate. One task that students generally don’t expect to encounter in organic chemistry is a lot of writing. After all, they are science majors. They chose a career path in science, and often they don’t see a connection between science and writing. Part of my job as a science instructor is to teach them that to be a successful scientist (or a doctor, or a veterinarian, or a pharmacist, or a dentist, or …), you must be able to communicate. A large part of communicating science is being able to explain results clearly and concisely to both scientific and non-scientific audiences, and to do so through writing. For example, when an experimental procedure is not communicated clearly and completely, it can be impossible for another person to replicate the recorded results. This could result in mistrust of the scientist’s data and conclusions, when in fact it is simply a result of poor communication. I thus incorporate a writing component into all my lecture courses. Students in Organic Chemistry I and II (CHEM 230 and 330) write study plans and reflections, and students in Advanced Organic Chemistry (CHEM 415) and Survey of Biochemistry (CHEM 250) write research papers. Additionally, the vast majority of my exam questions are written response questions and not multiple choice, even in courses where I have close to 100 students. Students need to show evidence of critical thinking and problem solving, and this is not easily assessed with multiple choice questions. Medical schools probably don’t care if students know the intricacies of

a particular organic chemistry reaction mechanism, but they do want students who can think critically and solve problems. Thus, Iemphasizewriting in my lecture coursesbecauseit is a critical skill that students must develop in both lecture and laboratory courses. After teaching organic chemistry labs for a few years, I realized that students often struggled with being able to write and format a coherent lab report. Students take two semesters of general chemistry lectures and laboratories in their freshmen year before beginning organic chemistry in their sophomore year. Our general chemistry labs focus on techniques and skills, but not on writing lab reports, so students have not had a lot of practice in doing so once they reach organic chemistry. Togive students some practice in writingand to tackle this problem, I developed a writing module that all students complete as their first “experiment” in organic chemistry lab. The writing module is broken up into two parts. The first part of the module discusses the importance of writing and why it is relevant in the sciences; we discuss how writing equals communicating—and that no matter their future career plans, they will need to be able to communicate. We also spend a great deal of time learning how to properly cite our sources, so that we can learn from experts in the field and correctly attribute those experts’ ideas. Many students think of writing only in terms of writing essays for English class, and I remind them that there are several different types and purposes of writing. The purpose of the first part of the module is to convince students that being able to write well will be relevant to their lives both during college and after they graduate. I explain that if they are planning to go to graduate school, they will need to write research papers, journal articles, grant applications, and a thesis. Their writing skills will also be important when preparing conference presentations. Because many of our chemistry students are planning to go into a health-related profession such as medicine, we also discuss how a large part of a doctor’s job involves charting and communicating with colleagues about patient care. In this field, inaccurate note-taking or charting could result in the death of a patient. My aspiring veterinarians often mention that their patients can’t speak for themselves, so it is critical for veterinarians to advocate for their patients and communicate their needs. For those students who are interested in careers in the chemical industry or an industrial lab, producing accurate lab notebook records and well-written reports is essential. I explain to students that the outcome of lawsuits can come down to what was written in a laboratory notebook. If it’s not recorded, it didn’t happen. Scientists can be fired, and even face criminal charges, for falsifying results or not accurately recording what was done in the lab. To this end, students learn that lab notebooks must be a complete record of what occurred in the lab (no pencil or white-out!). This means, even if they make an error, it must be reported. After all, sometimes “errors” lead to serendipitous discoveries! Furthermore, I tell the students that regardless of their career plans, at some point, they will have to apply for a job and that they must be able to effectively communicate and sell themselves to prospective employers. After completing the first part of the module about the importance of writing, we have a class discussion where students identify their career plans and discuss how writing will be important as they pursue their goals. Following this exercise, students tend to have a greater understanding and appreciation for why writing matters to their life. The second part of the module focuses more on the mechanics of writing, where we break down each part of a lab report (introduction, procedure, results, discussion, conclusions, and references) and look at what information belongs where. I have found many students struggle with understanding the difference between a results section, where you report the data obtained, and a discussion section, where you analyze and interpret those results. We also talk about formal and informal writing, avoiding conversational writing in a lab report, and correct use of citations. The writing module culminates in writing a lab report using supplied data, so the students get practice in all the different areas of a scientific lab report. Students

have reported that working through this module has helped them improve their writing, and it has also helped me to give them more specific feedback on their lab reports throughout the course. At the end of my courses, in addition to learning organic chemistry content, laboratory techniques, and problem-solving skills, I hope that students come out with an appreciation for writing as a communication tool and practice in using this tool effectively. The simple module described above, though, really isn’t all that simple and reminds me that our students tend to compartmentalize their classes. They don’t always see how skills from different classes in different disciplines are transferable. They also don’t readily see how many conventions may need to be tweaked when one moves between genres or writes for a different audience. In this light, the simple can instead be revelatory, and, I hope, this serves as a reminder that no matter our discipline, as instructors, we all need to step back and have these conversations about writing and communication with our students. We can’t simply think “I’ll leave the writing to those communication-intensive courses; I have too much content to get through.” Instead, we all have a responsibility to help our students hone these skills and give them opportunities to practice writing regardless of the discipline, because writing equals communication.