About six months ago posted an inquiry to this group about use of
nmr in undergrad teaching. Although the questions I posed were different
then what Bill asks above, I thought this would be an appropriate time to
let people know what responses I got. The questions were: (1) To what
extent do you, or are you able to, incorporate high field nmr into your
undergrad laboratory curriculum? (2) Do you have high field instruments
dedicated to your undergrad curriculum or is time share with research
instruments? (3) For what courses, and in what way is nmr instrumentation
used in your undergrad curriculum?
Fourteen people responded to these questions. At ten institutions
undergrads had some access to 200 and 300MHz nmrs. The type of access
was generally very limited and only included upper class courses. Only one
institution had a Gemini 200 which was bought with undergrad funds and
used primarily for undergrad teaching, all other instruments were
primarily research with time sharing for undergrad use.
The sense I got from the responses was that people are thinking of
how to incorporate high field nmr into undergrad teaching, that they see a
need for this. But overall there is a nervousness with the idea of
allowing access to such masses of inexperience.
Mary Howe
Univ of CA - Santa Cruz
Dept of Chemistry and Biochemistry
howe@chemistry.ucsc.edu