Chemistry M.S. Mission Statement:

The specific mission of the graduate program in chemistry may be summarized as follows:

1. To provide a program of study that prepares graduates to successfully pursue scientific careers in industry or to continue their education in a doctoral program or professional school.
2. To provide students with opportunities to reinforce their background and expand their knowledge in areas not covered by their undergraduate degrees, with course offerings in the five major branches of chemistry.
3. To provide a stimulating intellectual atmosphere conducive to the learning process of both students and faculty through low student-to-faculty ratios.
4. To provide the facilities and professional mentorship enabling students to propose, conduct, evaluate, and report on original research and thereby add to the knowledge of humanity.
5. To provide opportunities for students to refine both oral and written communication skills.

The graduate curriculum is designed to acquaint students with the current ideas in the five major areas of chemistry (organic, inorganic, physical, analytical, and biochemical). The thesis project affords the student practical experience in the methods used to obtain new knowledge and to develop the skills necessary to understand and relate this knowledge. Special topics courses allow individual professors to present specialized material in there area of expertise. The faculty maintains a wide variety of research programs, giving each student an opportunity to conduct, evaluate, and report on original research.

Chemistry M.S. Assessment Indicators:

Chemistry Department M.S. Exit Survey

Alumni Contacts (A record of these are maintained in a file folder in the chair office. )

Chemistry M.S. Program Outcomes:

These are also deposited at the TTU Strategic Planning Website., but the numbering system there will be different.

Program Goal I:

To increase the level of research and scholarly activity among the faculty by 5% per year.

Method of Assessment:

Assessment method in this area will be changed this year and more tightly focused on faculty publications for ease of accounting. Our goal is a 25% increase in the number of refereed scholarly publications listed in the Directory of Graduate Research over a four-year period. For the years 1997-2000, the faculty had 34 publications, and had average 17 per year for a number of years prior to 1997. Our goal is to achieve 42 publications in the years 2001-2004. We achieved 21 of those 42 in 2001-2002 {Dir. Grad Research 2003} We await publication of the 2005 DGR.

Action plans for 2005-06:

The Clayton Faculty Enrichment Fund in our department will continue to be exploited to stimulate faculty development by travel to scientific meetings. The Release time Bank initiative will be completed and implemented. These innovations in faculty teaching assignments will be implemented to provide larger blocks of time available for research. Grant writing by the faculty will be strongly encouraged, and writing a TTU faculty research grant will be considered normal procedure for any faculty member without external funding. The implementation of the faculty release time bank will give faculty hours for grant writing, involvement of students in research, extensive service activities, and so forth

Program Goal II:

(Chem Dept Unit Goal) To increase external funding by 5% per year to improve quality of instrumentation necessary for education and research.

Method of Assessment:

The success of this goal will be determined directly by the total amount of external funds activated each year by the department. The four-year total research funding level in the department 1998-2002 was $484K. Our target is a research funding level which is 20% larger than over the previous 4-year period. ($184K was raised in 2004-05 alone)

Action plans for 2005-06:

Grant writing by the faculty will be strongly encouraged. NSF-CCLI instructional grants will be submitted in order to obtain needed laboratory equipment to be used in research and teaching laboratories. Release time from teaching will be given to faculty receiving external funding for research. The faculty release time bank will be implemented to give faculty hours for grant writing, involvement of students in research, exttensive service activities, and so forth.

Program Goal III:

(Chem Dept Unit Goal) To establish a Chemistry Department Advisory Board

Method of Assessment:

Gaining the active participation of 10 members of this board will be the signal of success

Action plans for 2005-06:

We will offer our laboratory facilities for use by interns from TTU working on projects at Fleetguard for which no facilities exist at Fleetguard. We will recruit 10 alums successful in academia, business, and industry to participate in this board. A Homecoming Board meeting in Nov 2006 will be planned for the first meeting of this board.

Program Goal IV:

To decrease the traditional classroom teaching load of Graduate Program faculty to 9 contact hours by providing appropriate credit for student research involvement, grant writing, special service work, and other bona fide activities. 

Method of Assessment:

The success of this goal will be determined by the number of faculty able to reduce their teaching load to nine hours. It is a target that 2/3rds of the faculty, particularly the research-active faculty, will reach this goal.   
A faculty committee began working on establishing new departmental policies regarding teaching assignments. These are to reflect time spent in a more quantitative fashion on grant writing, support of student research, special service work, and so forth. This needs to be finished and implemented.

Action plans for 2005-06:

The release time bank will be implemented which will allow faculty to obtain credit for involvement of students in research, for major grant proposal writing, and for certain kinds of heavy service responsibilities. The idea of a bank will allow faculty to build up enough credits to be released from an entire 3-hour course assignment.  

Program Goal V:

The Chemistry M.S. Program will maintain a level of 5 graduates per year in order to be removed from the "low producing" list of TBR/THEC

Method of Assessment:

We will continue to monitor the graduation rate of this program on the yearly cycle beginning Summer commencement through following Spring commencement.

Action plans for 2005-06:

The Department will agressively implement its new Fast-Tracked M.S. program to boost productivity rate by getting qualified students through the program in less than 2 years. We will also encourage faculty to include research assistantship stipends in their external grants. We will also explore innovative ways of streamlining our MS program, and do exploratory research on the development of a non-thesis option.

Chemistry M.S. Student Learning Outcomes:

Learning Outcome I :

Students should emerge from the M.S. Chemistry graduate program being able to use effectively the scientific method to solve chemical problems. Particularly, this includes (but is not limited to):
a) being able to employ critical thinking skills to analyze a chemical problem,
b) collect background information through the effective use of the scientific literature,
c) prepare a hypothesis,
d) design and execute experiments to test the hypothesis, keeping complete experimental records,
e) apply appropriate statistical analysis to the data,
f) apply critical thinking skills to further refine the hypothesis based on experimental evidence
g) effectively communicate the results through both oral and written communication skills.

Assessment method: 

Student success will be determined by the graduate student's thesis advisory committee at the time of oral defense of the written thesis. Additionally, items on the M.S. Exit survey specifically address students' perceptions of progress on each of the above sub-outcomes.

Results:

This is the first year of this Learning Outcome.

Action Plan for 2005-06 in light of results

The director of the Chemistry M.S. program, Dr. Scott Northrup, in consultation with interiim chair Boles other graduate faculty in the department, will prepare a handbook for the program useful for both students and faculty in the program. The manual will outline program goals and expectations for the progress of every student toward this learning outcome. Faculty will be required to address each of the action points in the Learning Outcome during their mentoring relationships with students.

Learning Outcome II :

Students should emerge from the M.S. Chemistry graduate program being able to effectively communicate scientific knowledge and ideas through both oral and written communication skills.

Assessment method: 

Student success will be determined by the graduate student's thesis advisory committee at the time of oral defense of the written thesis. Also, a specific item is listed on the M.S. Exit Survey to assess students' perceptions of progress on learning to communicate scientific information.

Results:

This is the first year of this Learning Outcome.

Action Plan for 2005-06 in light of results

The coordinator of the Chemistry M.S. seminar program, in consultation with other graduate faculty in the department, will prepare and distribute an oral presentations handbook for students giving seminars in the M.S. program.

Chemistry Department Planning Process

Each semester the Chemistry Department administers the Chemistry Department M.S. Graduates' Survey to its graduating students.  The various research advisors and the chair maintain contacts with alumni and tabulates their career status.   The Chair also tabulates the student presentation titles for the annual report bibliography. The Chair typically includes these assessment data in the annual report submitted to the College of Arts and Sciences in June.  This annual report is also distributed among the faculty for comments in the Summer.   All of these data are retained on file in the main chemistry departmental office (FH219).

Goal-setting for the M.S. program in the Chemistry Department proceeds as follows. The Chair informally polls the faculty involved in mentoring graduate students by anonymous surveys to formulate both student outcome goals and strategic goals for the program. Early in the Spring semester the Chemistry Department Graduate Committee meets to set out learning goals and strategic goals formulated in consultation with the graduate faculty. Also the Chair makes available to the committee the data from assessment instruments.   These goals are set for the academic year beginning the following Fall, and they are input into the TTU Strategic Planning Website in May, along with progress on goals from the current academic year. 

The Chair also holds a discussion with and receives input from the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in the Spring, at which time the current year goals are discussed, and assessment results from previous cycles are presented.