A Preuniversity Initiative to Motivate Students to Pursue Chemistry Higher Education

Molecular School (MS) is an extracurricular initiative intended to show relevant and complex concepts of chemical sciences to precollege students. The main goal is to motivate the participants to expand their awareness of chemical sciences and to acknowledge its relevance in everyday life, in order...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of chemical education Vol. 100; no. 3; pp. 1189 - 1196
Main Authors Nogueira, Bernardo A., Tavares, Nélia C.T., Mendes, Maria Inês P., Pereira, Diogo A., Duque-Prata, Amílcar, Schaberle, Fábio A.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Easton American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc 14.03.2023
American Chemical Society
Subjects
Academic degrees
Chemistry
College students
Colleges & universities
Education
Extracurricular activities
Higher education
Motivation
Organic Chemistry
Science education
Student Motivation
Students
Teaching methods
Universities
Portugal
laboratory instruction
high school/introductory chemistry
interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary
hands-on learning/manipulatives
collaborative/cooperative learning
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN0021-9584
1938-1328
DOI10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c01095

Cover

More Information
Summary:Molecular School (MS) is an extracurricular initiative intended to show relevant and complex concepts of chemical sciences to precollege students. The main goal is to motivate the participants to expand their awareness of chemical sciences and to acknowledge its relevance in everyday life, in order to stimulate the students to engage in chemistry undergraduate degrees. Here, we address the successful case of MS, implemented in Portugal, where recently, the universities have been facing significant difficulties in attracting new students to join chemistry-related courses. We report the first three editions of this free of cost preuniversity school, whose main subject is chemistry. All editions were held in the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and organized by PhD students of the department of chemistry of this institution. The three editions are discussed here, with particular focus on the last edition. Several participants ultimately chose chemistry BSc degrees to continue their education, which substantiates the positive outreach of this initiative. We believe MS can be replicated, adapted, and improved in other contexts and countries to increase the number of students enrolling chemistry university degrees.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
ISSN:0021-9584
1938-1328
DOI:10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c01095