NFS Grant

5-9-96
McKeesport, Pa.-- The National Science Foundation awarded a $30,007 grant to the Penn State McKeesport Campus to support a program entitled, Integrating Computer-Enhanced Molecular Visualization into Organic Chemistry, General Chemistry, and Chemistry for Non-Majors. The University will match the NSF funds. The grant was written by Dr. Chris Maricondi, professor of chemistry, and Dr. Bruce Barron, grant support staff. Dr. Maricondi will serve as director of the project which begins July 1, 1996 and continues to June 30, 1998. The award will be used to establish a computer lab for science students at the Penn State McKeesport Campus. This lab will include 12 MacIntosh Model 7500 computers with 17-inch color monitors and color-capable printers. The computers will be locally networked and connected to the Internet.

Accompanying software is designed to allow students to simulate the electronic and molecular structures of a wide variety of molecules to help them in their study of chemistry. The facility will be used by all students taking chemistry labs, but especially those taking courses in academic areas as chemistry, biology, chemical engineering, pre-medicine, and animal bioscience. Two of the Chemistry faculty offices and the library will be similarly configured with hardware and software to allow for one-on-one instruction and access on the weekends.

Few colleges and universities offer this level of computer-enhanced chemical education to freshmen and sophomores. Furthermore, Penn State McKeesport intends to use the computer lab equipment to improve secondary-level education in the region through the cooperation of the Mon Valley Education Consortium. The MVEC is a nonprofit organization assisting 25 school districts in southwest Pennsylvania and is known for its leadership in promoting educational reform at the elementary and secondary level.

Dr. Maricondi and Dr. Edward W. Bittner, professor of chemistry, will give demonstrations for area high-school science teachers seeking ways to enhance their instruction.

The new facility also will be available to the Women in Science, Engineering and Technology program offered each summer for female high-school students. Dr. John Zavodni, professor of biology, plans to incorporate A.D.A.M. Essentials, a CD-ROM exploration of the human body, into his curriculum. Dr. Richard T. Obermyer, professor of physics, has long-range plans to incorporate some of the physics-based computer simulations into his physics courses.

Dr. Maricondi is the Deans representative of the Eberly College of Science at the McKeesport Campus. He joined the campus faculty in 1969 and holds a B.A. in chemistry from West Virginia University and Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh where he also serves as Visiting Research Professor of Chemistry.

While new discoveries in science and technology are happening at an accelerating rate, introductory chemistry lab courses have remained largely the same for 20 years with the exception of the introduction of microscale techniques.

Penn State McKeesports science computer lab will not displace the traditional lab in the introductory chemistry courses, rather it will complement it. Students will be able to do some what-if experiments with the computer, then carry out the actual experiment in the wet lab to see if the predictions about chemical reactivity are borne out.

Dr. Maricondi believes that using a computer for these molecular visualizations will help students to realize how important it is to think of the sub-microscopic world of nature as scientifically useful, beneficial, and intrinsically very interesting. The computational approach to chemistry is now used extensively in drug design, study of mutagenesis, and DNA-foreign molecule interactions to name just a few.

Study modules will also be developed for the non-science majors to give them a feel for how the modern chemist uses high-speed computers for the benefit of society.

###