“Teaching Programming Across the Chemistry Curriculum:” An ACS Symposium Series Book
Prof. Ashley Ringer McDonald, Associate Professor in the Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Cal Poly and a MolSSI Associate, and Dr. Jessica Nash, MolSSI’s Education Lead, are accepting contributions for an ACS Symposium Series book entitled “Teaching Programming Across the Chemistry Curriculum,” to be published in 2021.
Programming and computational science represent increasingly important components of an inclusive chemistry curriculum. Different institutions and departments may include computer programming as part of the chemistry curriculum in many different ways. Some curricula may require a stand-alone programming course, taught by a computer science or computer engineering department, while others exclude targeted computer programming instruction completely.
This book will focus on teaching programming within the existing chemistry curriculum. This volume will include chapters that describe different mechanisms and activities to incorporate programming into all levels of the chemistry curriculum. It is also intended to address challenges that may be encountered implementing a programming curriculum, how the programming learning objectives are integrated with chemistry learning objectives, and the best practices for teaching programming to chemists.
Drs. Ringer McDonald and Nash are currently accepting chapter proposals for this volume. Each chapter will discuss a particular activity that is used to teach programming to students or describe a larger curricular innovation at the department or institutional level. Submissions should focus on some aspect of teaching programming rather than only using computational tools in the chemistry curriculum. We are particularly interested in having contributions and exemplars from across the chemistry curriculum, including at the general or introductory chemistry level. Chapters can discuss any type of molecular science example, including machine learning or data science.
Should you wish to contribute to this timely publication, or have any questions about its focus, contact either Dr. Ringer McDonald or Dr. Nash. The deadline for submitting chapter proposals is 31 October 2020, with chapters due in February 2021 (firm date to be determined).