A Preuniversity Initiative to Motivate Students to Pursue Chemistry Higher Education

• Published in: Journal 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
• Language: English
• 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
• ISSN: 0021-9584; 1938-1328
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c01095

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.