GGRANTS

UHD Chemists Develop Million-Dollar Formula for Student Success

By Laura Wagner

Time has revealed a surprising silver lining to the pandemic: It has served as an engine of innovation. That was certainly the case for two UHD faculty members whose innovative thinking generated a novel approach to teaching online chemistry labs.

Developed during the pandemic to give homebound students hands-on lab experiences, the approach is the brainchild of College of Sciences and Technology faculty Dr. Eszter Trufan, Associate Professor of Chemistry, and Dr. Elene Bouhoutsos-Brown, Chemistry Adjunct Professor. The pair’s outside-the-lab thinking paid off with a multi-year Open Textbooks Pilot (OTP) program grant worth $1.16 million to enhance and grow the method they titled “Experimentium: Inclusive by Design.”

“Success with any project like this starts with fundamentally understanding your student population,” Trufan said. “Many of our students have English as a second language, but many have never set foot in a chemistry lab, or they may struggle with financial insecurity. Our challenge is to convey jargon-dense chemistry instruction so students don’t make mistakes over and over. And it must be affordable.”

The OTP grant supports projects that help students realize savings through open textbooks, particularly in high-demand fields like STEM, making Experimentium a perfect fit. “This is the frontier of chemistry instruction,” said Trufan. “We are going to push the boundaries.”

Partners at Baylor University in Waco and Houston Community College are also part of the project, which will include experiments for students with disabilities. “Video-based instruction with closed captioning and transcripts will accommodate a range of disabilities and allow those students to perform experiments independently at home,” said Trufan.

They’re also planning to share their approach and resources widely via the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board OERTX Repository, at conferences, and with high school teachers.

Bouhoutsos-Brown is excited to have students move past the “cookbook” approach to chemistry and finds it gratifying that students in their courses shared their learnings with their own children and parents. “They’re engaging the community in our studies. That’s a positive force for STEM, which makes me very happy.”