OVERALL Update

Nine weeks into my sabbatical, here is a list of what I have done so far:

Lab Manual:

I have gone through every lab to be revised, cleaned up the OCR files, revised safety precautions and incorporated other changes based on my notes from teaching the classes and notes from other faculty.  These changes include redrawing structures of molecules, correcting chemical formulas and symbols, cleaning up tables, graphs, and figures, rewriting chemical equations, and rewriting calculation steps.  Other changes include removing any references to the use of mercury, rewriting instructions for new equipment such as the pH meters and the Vernier visible spectrometers, replacing some chemical reagents.  I also have spent close to 20 hours improving upon the 30B Lab 19.2.  I also have spent 5 hours trying out a new set of salts for Lab 3102.  Notes and changes are documented in an Excel spreadsheet.  For each revised lab, I have detailed notes of what changes have been made both in an excel spreadsheet and highlighted in blue with accompanying comments in the annotated versions.  I will be posting these annotated versions for review by faculty and lab staff.

SLO Research:

I have completed descriptions of the SLO process for at least 3 colleges (Santa Rosa JC, Contra Costa College, and Mt. San Antonio College).  These three Colleges responded to questions by e-mail.  I have also perused the City College of San Francisco website and I believe I can have all my questions answered from their website.  I am still waiting for two more responses (Chabot College and Sacramento City College).

Based on what I have learned from the 4 colleges, I have written up a proposal for our own Chemistry Program SLO Implementation process that I have sent to my full-time colleagues.

Micro-Physio Questions

I have perused the lab manuals for the Physiology Course and Microbiology Course that Jill and Barbara have lent me.  I am also 3/4 done perusing relevant chapters and sections from the text used in the Physiology course (Silverthorn).  Up to date, I have written 65 questions, mostly for the 30A course but some for the 30B course as well.  The topics covered range from unit conversion and dimensional analysis, density, solution concentrations including osmolarities, gases, acid-base and pH, redox, nomenclature and molecular structure, etc.

I have also written 32 slides worth of notes to incorporate into my lectures for 30A and 30B.

Book Reading

I have read 3 books so far out of the 15.  I have started my fourth book.

Article Reading

I have collected some 20 or so articles for reading.  I am sure that reading these articles will generate more articles that will go on the list.