2008 Woodie Awards
Full-time chemistry lab keeps Northwestern students busy over summer
Jodi S. Cohen
Issue date: 8/12/08 Section: News
CHICAGO (MCT) - At Northwestern University this summer, one course description comes with a warning: "It is recommended that students not register concurrently for other courses."
Not that there would be time to anyway.
About 50 students are spending 207 hours over nine weeks in a windowless lecture hall and basement laboratory to complete three introductory chemistry courses. They will cover what is typically taught in a year.
"It's insane," Nasrin Meftah said.
"It's like really cold water - you eventually get used to it but it's still not pleasant," Saralyn Leffel said.
Even the chemistry professor who runs the lab didn't mince words when asked to describe the back-to-back-to-back classes on general chemistry, inorganic chemistry and physical chemistry. Each runs for three weeks.
"I wouldn't do it," Professor Shelby Hatch said.
Some students are undergraduates at Northwestern or other schools, while others are career-changers who need the science credits for medical school. All of them-minus the 15 or so who dropped out in the first few weeks - decided that sacrificing their summer was better than taking a year to complete what can be tedious lectures on such topics as the movement of electrons.
The chemistry students are among about 2,200 undergraduates at Northwestern this summer taking classes in everything from accounting to theater. Most class meet for only a few hours a week.
Intensive courses at Northwestern and elsewhere are more typically reserved for the study of a foreign language, not the sciences. Northwestern also offers them in biology and physics.
In chemistry, students sit through lectures from 9 a.m. to noon, Monday to Friday, and are in the laboratory from 1 to 5 p.m. twice a week.
During each three-week class, there are two midterms, a final, three quizzes and six lab reports. Students said they typically are reading the textbook, doing homework problems or completing lab work until at least midnight every day.
Not that there would be time to anyway.
About 50 students are spending 207 hours over nine weeks in a windowless lecture hall and basement laboratory to complete three introductory chemistry courses. They will cover what is typically taught in a year.
"It's insane," Nasrin Meftah said.
"It's like really cold water - you eventually get used to it but it's still not pleasant," Saralyn Leffel said.
Even the chemistry professor who runs the lab didn't mince words when asked to describe the back-to-back-to-back classes on general chemistry, inorganic chemistry and physical chemistry. Each runs for three weeks.
"I wouldn't do it," Professor Shelby Hatch said.
Some students are undergraduates at Northwestern or other schools, while others are career-changers who need the science credits for medical school. All of them-minus the 15 or so who dropped out in the first few weeks - decided that sacrificing their summer was better than taking a year to complete what can be tedious lectures on such topics as the movement of electrons.
The chemistry students are among about 2,200 undergraduates at Northwestern this summer taking classes in everything from accounting to theater. Most class meet for only a few hours a week.
Intensive courses at Northwestern and elsewhere are more typically reserved for the study of a foreign language, not the sciences. Northwestern also offers them in biology and physics.
In chemistry, students sit through lectures from 9 a.m. to noon, Monday to Friday, and are in the laboratory from 1 to 5 p.m. twice a week.
During each three-week class, there are two midterms, a final, three quizzes and six lab reports. Students said they typically are reading the textbook, doing homework problems or completing lab work until at least midnight every day.
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