Chemistry
2022-2023 Program Review

The Chemistry Department currently consists of 14 full-time faculty, 9 adjunct faculty, and 5 full-time support staff (Stockroom/IA). We offer 10 different core classes and an Independent Study class. The core classes include the following: introductory General Chemistry courses that serve as prerequisites for General and Organic Chemistry as well as fulfilling the Chemistry requirement for students pursuing a nursing qualification; General Chemistry I and II for science majors and Organic Chemistry I and II for Chemistry and Biological Science majors; a brief, one semester Organic Chemistry course for some Biological Science majors; and a Chemistry course for Funeral Service students. Currently 14% of our offerings are fully online, 23% are hybrid, and 63% are in-person. All of our classes leading to 4-year degrees (400 level) are in-person. Since the last Program Review, the Department has also created and currently offers several Chem 80 series classes. These are 0.75 unit support classes taken concurrently with regularly offered Chemistry classes. The classes meet weekly and provide specific learning strategies and support for the associated course. Support classes such as these are particularly helpful for groups with historically lower success rates and may play a key role in closing the DI equity gap in Chemistry. The Department would like to offer Chem 80 classes to support all of our regular offerings, but this is currently limited by available faculty and FTE.

The purpose of the Department (why we exist) is to produce students who are highly educated in chemical concepts and practice and academically prepared to transfer to technical education and 4-year degree programs.  Our purpose is also to create critical thinkers who understand the role that chemistry plays in the world and who value equity and diversity.

The function of the Department (what we do) is to provide Chemistry classes for students with many different academic and career goals:

• Introductory classes to effectively prepare students for entry into the 2-year Chemistry series and to act as General Education classes that satisfy the scientific lab requirement.
• Chemistry classes that serve as a prerequisite for students entering the healthcare field (for example nursing).
• A chemistry class for students entering the funeral service field.
• General Chemistry classes that serve as prerequisites for Organic Chemistry and other Associate’s and Batchelor’s degree programs, (biological sciences, engineering, physics, geology, etc.).
• Organic Chemistry classes that serve as prerequisites for students transferring to a 4-year college to study Chemical or Biological Sciences.
• Support classes to improve the success rate of students taking the classes listed above. 
• We also provide tutoring support within the Department (IA and Beacon tutors).

The mission of American River College is to provide a vibrant learning environment that empowers all students to achieve their educational and career goals. Our faculty employs a wide array of strategies to help the College achieve this mission: Interactive PowerPoint lectures with printed notes are used for efficient content delivery – many teachers also provide video versions of lectures that students can view at their own pace or use as a study resource (an invaluable tool for students with learning disabilities and English learners); flipped classrooms and active learning techniques are employed to encourage group discussion and problem-solving, empowering students to become critical thinkers and lifelong learners; interesting and challenging laboratory experiences promote curiosity, problem-solving, and teamwork, as well as an interest in science and technology; modern analytical equipment exposes students to high-level applications of chemistry, preparing them for academic research and industry positions; high academic standards along with the instruction and support to achieve them encourages our students to develop and achieve their educational and career goals.

Over the past six years, the Department has made excellent progress towards many of its objectives, but some goals have yet to be achieved. These will be discussed in detail below, but the unexpected challenges of the Covid global pandemic and our rapid and effective response should also be noted here. We are extremely proud of our achievements during Covid, not least of which was continuing to offer all our chemistry classes in a fully online modality, with a lead time of about a week. During those first uncertain weeks the objectives of every Department were significantly limited and amounted to some version of ‘survive’. Not only did we achieve this objective, but we very quickly far exceeded it. Using Zoom and video recordings, teaching lectures online is a relatively straightforward endeavor, but subjects like Chemistry that include lab sections faced unique challenges. In the event, our faculty showed incredible imagination and resolve to rapidly create online lab courses that provided interesting, challenging, and educational content that came as close to recreating the in-person lab experience as possible. Using a combination of lab video (in many cases recorded by the teacher in the lab), online simulations, and home labs developed by our faculty, students were able to see real experiments, create their own data, and even perform simplified, safe versions of chemistry labs in their own kitchens (in one experiment students used their smart phone as a spectrophotometer to find the rate law of a reaction). The experiments could be discussed, results evaluated, and hypotheses tested, just like an in-person lab - it was a fantastic response, developed at extremely short notice, that allowed us to provide the highest quality online experience possible. This experience showed that some of our introductory courses (including labs) could be offered completely online, even after we returned to campus, but that for 400 level classes (General and Organic Chemistry), no online lab experience is currently an adequate substitute for in-person labs.

Regarding the Department’s non-Covid-related objectives over the last six years, we have completed or made progress in some areas, but have been unable to make significant progress in others. Our objectives fall into the following general categories: staffing/FTE, facilities, teaching effectiveness, collaboration/community, and equity/diversity.

Staffing/FTE:

• The ACS (American Chemical Society) recommends a ratio of Instructional Assistants (IA) to full-time faculty of 1 to 4. At the time of the last Program Review we had a ratio of 1 to 10 and had hoped to improve on those numbers. We did not achieve our goal and have actually gone in the wrong direction, currently having a ratio of 1 to 14.
• We wanted our students to have additional tutoring opportunities: more IAs and Beacon tutors within the Department, as well as more Chemistry tutors in MESA, and the LRC. These were especially needed to help close the equity gap. As noted above, we have not been able to hire additional IAs, but we have continued to provide Beacon tutors for most of our classes. We have also helped our students become chemistry tutors in MESA, but both MESA and the LRC still struggle to meet the demand and are not always able to provide sufficient specialist chemistry tutors.
• We had hoped to expand our course offerings beyond the core classes described in section 1.1, to attract students looking to fulfill a STEM GE requirement and make STEM more accessible. Unfortunately, the economic downturn and reduced student numbers in the aftermath of Covid has meant that almost all of the available FTE has been needed to maintain the core classes on which so many students depend. Consequently, we have been very limited in our ability to expand our course offerings. We do have one addition, however: Chemistry 338 (Chemistry in Your World), which has been approved by the curriculum committee and will be offered for the first time in Fall 2023.

Facilities:

• Additional storage facilities for chemicals/lab equipment was required. Although the Chemistry stockroom has undergone some reorganization, no new storage facilities have been acquired.
• To stay current with andragogical advances, our classroom/lab instructional technologies needed to be updated. We have made progress in this goal, upgrading our gas chromatographs to modern research grade instruments, refurbishing an NMR machine, replacing old handheld data processing devices with new Sparc stations, and replacing several classroom projectors.
• The Chemistry building is old and in need of replacement and we had hoped that the College would green-light the construction of a new Chemistry building, or at least provide some new facilities in the meantime. The main goal still appears to be some way off and although our Department now has limited use of two new classrooms in the Arts and Science building, the laboratory facilities continue to deteriorate. A new building would provide functional and welcoming lab rooms as well as meeting spaces for improved student/teacher interaction – these small group interactions are essential to attain the best outcomes for students with learning or physical disabilities, and those in marginalized groups.

Teaching Effectiveness:

• Prior to Covid, the Department had already planned to create online/hybrid classes to help students who are unable to maintain traditional college hours, especially DI groups. During Covid, all classes were adapted to be fully online out of necessity, but most have now moved back to in-person. However, in line with our original goal, we have continued to offer several online/hybrid classes as part of our normal schedule.
• To ensure consistency between the desired outcomes for individual classes (developed in accordance with the American Chemistry Society's requirements) and for the Department as a whole, we planned to align all course level SLOs with program level SLOs. This goal has been accomplished.
• We planned to improve how we connect students to campus resources. All faculty and staff would find ways to help connect students to various campus resources (e.g. STEM Homebase, TRIO, and MESA) that are staffed to accommodate students from culturally diverse backgrounds. This has been accomplished by including these resources in class orientation materials, referencing them in class syllabi and on Canvas, and by posting announcements for events and resources in the department hallway.

Collaboration/Community:

• Based on the most recent recommendations from the American Chemical Society's 2-year college assessment report, we had planned to build partnerships with local industry and academic institutions. Although this goal is open-ended, we have made great strides in the right direction. For example, we have collaborated with the Environmental Council of Sacramento (ECOS) on “Chemists Celebrate Earth Week”, partnered with Cal State Sacramento on the SIRIUS II project, an authentic Learning Experience with projects that revolve around Sacramento waterways, are part of the Learning Lab grant with CSU and California Community College System (a Faculty Learning Program in STEM), and partnered with UC Davis on the GAANN program to train the next generation of STEM teachers (including future teachers from DI populations). Chemistry faculty have also served as chair of the Sacramento branch of the ACS and worked at the MASE center at Cal State Sacramento providing professional development opportunities for local middle and high school chemistry teachers.   
• Another goal was to increase community awareness of the Department by our annual participation in on-campus and off-campus community activities. Although there is no specific measure of “community awareness”, our faculty members have organized and participated in many activities both on and off-campus. These include student clubs and student services on campus, presenting at the Natomas Community Outreach and Cultural Event, coordinating local tryouts for the National Chemistry Olympiad, and demonstration shows for a group of Natomas area middle schools, as well as many others.  Targeting the extremely diverse Natomas area helps to encourage more students in DI groups to consider studying chemistry (and other subjects) at ARC. 

Equity/Diversity:

• As teachers at one of the most ethnically diverse colleges in the country, we wanted to increase our cultural competency and increase our Department members' knowledge and practice of social justice and equity. This is an ongoing process, both understanding the issues and enacting solutions. To this end, all Department faculty are continually attending workshops and seminars focused on equity and social justice, and then using their new understanding to improve their classes.
• We had hoped to increase the cultural diversity of our tutoring pool (assuming students might be more willing to visit tutors more representative of their communities). This has been quite successful and although the tutoring pool is ever-changing, we currently have many Beacon tutors from minority ethnic groups, including DI populations as well as the LGBTQ+ community. In addition to having tutors who are more representative of our student population, many of these tutors also speak several languages.
• As part of our commitment to equity and social justice, we planned to hold bi-annual reviews of disproportionate impact data in staff meetings to become more aware of the gaps in achievement and to strategize ways to reduce inequity. In line with our goal, we currently review the data and have robust discussions at least once every semester during Faculty meetings.

In reviewing our objectives and achievements of the last six years, it is clear that the academic and classroom experience provided by the Chemistry Department is a definite strength. We are dedicated to providing the best possible learning environment for all of our students and constantly evaluate our teaching and support strategies and incorporate new approaches and technologies wherever possible to achieve the best outcomes. We share the concerns of almost every other Department regarding the equity gap that still exists between DI groups and the rest of the student population, and closing this gap remains a challenge. In our attempts to meet this challenge, our faculty members regularly attend seminars, classes, and courses to better understand the issues involved and to learn about classroom and institutional strategies to reduce the educational disparities. We also regularly discuss the dis-aggregated success data to try to identify patterns and develop solutions. Many ideas have already been introduced in the classroom such as OER (free) textbooks, a more diverse group of Beacon tutors, increased time for test taking, and more allowances made for individual issues relating to family, care-giving responsibilities, and financial limitations. Unfortunately, some strategies are limited by budget considerations, including offering Chem 80 series support classes for all courses, and hiring additional IAs to provide more student help in the classroom, more opportunities for students to make up missed labs, and more open tutoring sessions within the Department.

Another strength is our increasing interaction with the local community, academic institutions, and local industry and our involvement in programs that encourage local K-12 students to pursue higher education, especially in STEM fields. Many of these programs are specifically aimed at students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Our biggest challenge is currently the Chemistry building itself, which is seriously outdated and barely fit for purpose. It has a roof that frequently leaks during rainstorms, holes in cabinets from a fairly recent rat infestation, and an electrical wiring system that blows the circuit-breaker if half the students in a class use a hot-plate at the same time. This has been an issue for some time and although we understand the financial limitations of the District, we continue to hope that a new Chemistry building will be built sooner rather than later.

Our findings can be broken into two parts: the Department’s general effectiveness in teaching chemistry and enabling students to move through the chemistry series and on to technical education or four-year degree programs, and the Department’s specific effectiveness in closing the equity gap between DI student populations and the rest of the student body.

General Effectiveness

• The Department is doing an excellent job of educating students and helping them to move smoothly through the academic system (our “Pathways” project, started this year, will provide even more assistance and guidance in this area, especially for DI student groups). However, we are limited in some respects by the current budget issues that prevent us from offering a broader range of GE classes and providing more IA support for students. We are also badly in need of a new Chemistry building to provide a working, accessible environment for faculty, staff, and students that is safe, functional (faucets that don’t leak, electrical circuits that work, cabinets without holes gnawed by rats), comfortable (warm in the winter, cool in the summer and dry during wet weather), and that allows us to teach efficiently with 21^st century technology.

The Equity Gap

• Like most Departments at ARC, the data show that there is a lower than average success rate for African American and Hispanic/Latino students in many Chemistry courses. As a Department, we are as dedicated to resolving this discrepancy as we are to improving every other aspect of what we do. Since the last Program Review, our faculty have taken many steps to better acquaint themselves with the challenges faced by all marginalized groups and to find evidence-based solutions. Some examples are: speaking directly to African American and Hispanic/Latino students about their specific challenges; attending the STEM Equity Institute; attending seminars on many equity-related subjects, including data equity, serving refugee students, how to be an LGBTQ+ ally, grading for equity, and securing the educational pipeline for black students. Moving forward, we will continue this learning process and continue to seek evidence-based approaches to raising the success of DI groups. The Department has already changed many of its practices in an effort to help all disadvantaged groups, such as the adoption of OER (free) textbooks in many classes, a more diverse group of Beacon tutors, increased time for test taking, more online resources (video lectures and video help with homework and labs), and more allowances made for individual issues relating to family, care-giving responsibilities, and financial limitations.
• Although our adjunct faculty pool is quite diverse, our full-time faculty is currently less diverse than the student body. Although there is no evidence that this contributes in any significant way to the equity gap (the same issues were evident when our faculty pool was more diverse), a more representative faculty would possibly make Chemistry visibly more welcoming to students of color. We are hoping to hire one or possibly two new faculty in the near future and based on the very diverse applicant pools seen for our most recent hires, there is a high probability that the best candidate(s) will increase the diversity of our full-time faculty.

In the Department’s ideal future, we would have:

• Equally high student success across all demographics.
• A new Chemistry building that allows us to teach with the latest technology in safe, functional, accessible, and welcoming labs and workspaces (including spaces for student study groups and computer access for students).
• Enough full-time and adjunct faculty as well as enough FTE to accommodate all the students who want to take core chemistry classes at ARC.
• Enough full-time and adjunct faculty as well as enough FTE to offer some ‘fun’ chemistry classes to fulfill GE requirements and to attract interest from the local population (“Chemistry in the Kitchen”, or an Environmental Chemistry class, for example).

The mission of ARC is to provide a vibrant learning environment that empowers all students to achieve their educational and career goals. A Chemistry Department that continues to provide top-quality instruction in core classes as well as GE and general interest classes, in a state-of-the-art facility with welcoming work and study spaces and support for all students is almost the definition of a vibrant learning environment that would empower all students to achieve their educational and career goals. 

All Chemistry Faculty constantly analyze their teaching practices and individually or collectively make incremental improvements to improve student engagement, understanding, retention, and application of chemical concepts. We are also constantly striving to make our classes more equitable and welcoming for all students. A continuation of these practices, along with an expansion of student support (more IAs) in a facility that would attract students from across the District would clearly improve our academic quality.

The main program-level objective which would enhance the Department’s effectiveness is a new building for the Chemistry Department. All the ways in which we help our students would be enhanced by achieving this objective and it would also attract more students to study chemistry at ARC rather than Sierra College, or Folsom Lake College, both of which have significantly newer facilities for their Chemistry Departments. In addition to functional and welcoming classrooms and labs, a new building would solve our chemical storage issues, provide faculty offices more amenable to helping students during office hours, and provide informal spaces where students could gather and study. There could also be dedicated learning spaces with IA and peer-tutoring available during regular class hours. This could be especially helpful for DSPS students and those from DI groups, possibly helping to close the equity gap in Chemistry. We would also invite representatives from groups such as Umoja Sakhu, Puente, and the Native American Resource Center to visit these spaces to provide support and guidance to DI students. The Department first requested a new building at least ten years ago and although it is frustrating to still be waiting, we understand the financial limitations and other Departments’ more urgent needs. Working towards this ideal future is therefore a matter of regularly reminding the District of our needs and waiting our turn. The success of this objective will be easy to measure – if we have a new building, or one that is at least in the planning process, we will have succeeded.

The best way to support social justice and equity is by educating all students to a high level of subject competence in a welcoming and inclusive environment, where social, educational, and career goals are supported and advanced. The way the Department will do this is by:

• providing additional tutoring opportunities: more IAs and Beacon tutors within the Department, as well as more Chemistry tutors in MESA and the LRC.
• expanding our course offerings beyond the core classes to attract students looking to fulfill a STEM GE requirement, making STEM more accessible.
• continuing to lobby for a new building with better labs and meeting spaces for improved student/teacher interaction – these small group interactions are essential to attain the best outcomes for students with learning or physical disabilities, and those in marginalized groups.
• finding ways to help connect students to various campus resources (e.g. STEM, TRIO STEM, Homebase, and MESA) that are staffed to accommodate students from culturally diverse backgrounds.
• increasing our cultural competency and our knowledge and practice of social justice and equity. This is an ongoing process, both understanding the issues and enacting solutions. To this end, all Department faculty are continually attending workshops and seminars focused on equity and social justice, and then using their new understanding to improve their classes.
• holding bi-annual (or more frequent) reviews of disproportionate impact data in staff meetings to become more aware of the gaps in achievement and to strategize ways to reduce inequity.