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ABSTRACT Collaborations between community colleges, non-research centered universities and research universities can enrich the flow of students into Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) majors and careers. The nation is beginning to understand the importance of such interaction especially with under-represented minorities and those with disabilities. For over fifteen years our group has developed new ways to integrate these students and their faculty to the research culture. This will lead to increased diversity and inform research university faculty of the great talent that is latent in these underserved pools. 

ABSTRACT In the case of General Chemistry, many engineering students only take a one semester class with important topics such as kinetics and equilibrium being given limited coverage. Considerable time is spent covering materials already covered in other courses such as General Physics and Introduction to Engineering. Moreover, most GChem courses are oriented toward health science majors and lack a materials focus relevant to engineering. Taking an atoms first approach, we developed and now run a one-semester course in general chemistry for engineers emphasizing relevant materials topics. Laboratory exercises integrate practical examples of materials science enriching the course for engineering students. First-semester calculus and a calculus-based introduction to engineering course are prerequisites, which enables teaching almost all the topics from a traditional two semester GChem course in this new course with advance topics as well. To support this course, an open access textbook in LibreText, formerly ChemWiki was developed entitled General Chemistry for Engineering . Many of the topics were supported using Chemical Excelets and Materials Science Excelets, which are interactive Excel/Calc spreadsheets. The laboratory includes data analysis and interpretation, calibration, error analysis, reactions, kinetics, electrochemistry, and spectrophotometry. To acquaint the students with online collaboration typical of today’s technical workplace Google Drive was used for data analysis and report preparation in the laboratory.