Organic chemistry, a course considered intimidating by many students, desperately needs an ambassador. California Professor of the Year Neil Garg, who has been wildly successful in getting UCLA students to love organic chemistry, is more than happy to fill that role.
"The field of organic chemistry has made a tremendous mistake," Garg said, "in not showing students and the general public its importance and why they should love it — or at the very least, appreciate it."
That's why Garg cooked up BACON (Biology And Chemistry Online Notes), a set of fun and engaging online tutorials that make connections between organic chemistry and such topics as sports, health, genetics and even popular television shows. Garg's students have been eating it up, and now science educators around are using the tutorials to inspire their students as well.
"BACON makes organic chemistry less intimidating and really helps students learn chemical reactions and retain the knowledge ... while keeping the stress level down, said Michael Bailey, Jr., a UCLA senior and pre-medicine major. "The BACON tutorials completely changed my view of organic chemistry. I laughed, I cried, I learned."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 22 2016, @05:34PM
Everyone has their strong-points. Most of the chemists I know are afraid of biology because it's too complex.
I loved chemistry but doing gene therapy (manipulating genes and producing modified viruses to deliver them) was just too cool of a opportunity to pass up.