Feb 26, 2021
In new article, Professor Alex Spokoyny and former and current members of his group write about undergraduate teaching and mentorship at UCLA.
Specifically, the authors discuss how individual undergraduate researchers contributed and jump-started multiple research themes since the conception of the Spokoyny research laboratory. The paper also describes several recent innovations in the inorganic and general chemistry courses taught by Spokoyny at UCLA with a focus of nurturing appreciation for research and creative process in sciences including the use of social media platforms.
“The pandemic lockdown was a great time to reflect on some of the teaching and mentorship efforts we have been pushing at UCLA,” Spokoyny said. “The first part of the paper highlights the amazing accomplishments of many of our group’s former undergraduate researchers. The second part describes some of the efforts we have undertaken with Mary Grumbles and Dr. Roshini Ramachandran (pictured with Spokoyny in 2019) teaching chemistry to non-STEM students through our brand-new Material World (Chemistry 3) course at UCLA”.The article titled “Narratives of undergraduate research, mentorship, and teaching at UCLA” was recently published in Pure and Applied Chemistry.
The authors are current or former Spokoyny group members - Simone L. Stevens, Alice C. Phung, Alejandra Gonzalez, Yanwu Shao, Elamar Hakim Moully, Vinh T. Nguyen, Joshua L. Martin, Chantel Mao, Azin Saebi, Daniel Mosallaei, Monica Kirollos, Paul Chong, Alexander Umanzor, Kevin Qian, Gustavo Marin, Omar M. Ebrahim, Ramya S. Pathuri, Morgan Hopp, Dr. Roshini Ramachandran, Mary A. Waddington [Grumbles] and Spokoyny.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.