Students with a cumulative gradepoint average of 3.40 or higher after five semesters may enter the Distinguished Majors Program in Chemistry. Application for the Distinguished Majors Program must be made prior to the beginning of the seventh semester. Administration of the Distinguished Majors Program is the responsibility of the department's Undergraduate Advising Committee.
Members of the Distinguished Majors Program in Chemistry will complete all requirements for:
Students completing the requirements for
are required to pass an additional three-hour lecture course in chemistry, at the 400-level or higher, beyond the minimum requirements for the B.A. No additional formal course work in chemistry is required in the Distinguished Majors Program for those students who complete either the B.Sc. in Chemistry (any or no Specialization) or the B.A. with Specialization in Biological Chemistry.
The courses comprising the requirements for the B.Sc. in Chemistry, the B.A. with Specialization in Biological Chemistry, and the B.A. in Chemistry are listed in the Departmental Brochure "Chemistry Programs at the University of Virginia."
Students in the Distinguished Majors Program will complete, in addition to the courses outlined above, two semesters (6 credit hours) of guided study and research (CHEM 395, 396 or CHEM 495, 496) under the supervision of a member of the chemistry faculty. (B.Sc. in Chemistry majors may also count these research courses toward fulfillment of the "science electives" portion of their normal degree requirements.) The student's research work will be described in written form. The faculty research supervisor and the Undergraduate Advising Committee will judge the work and the report.
As indicated in the RECORD, the student's cumulative gpa at graduation must be 3.4000 or higher for all courses taken at the University of Virgina (not just the major courses).
The fourth-year project is intended to foster independent thought and to develop the student's ability to perform scientific research. "Research" in this context may be experimental, theoretical or computational, but must make reference to experimental work, including the canons of experimental design and the interpretation of data. It is essential to place the work in a modern context, which requires a review of the relevant primary chemical research literature. The written report must be approved by the research advisor and submitted to the Undergraduate Advising Committee during the student's eighth semester.
In addition to a written summary of the fourth-year project, a public oral presentation of the work is required. Ideally, this presentation shall be made during the month of April of the student's fourth year. The presentation may be made at a technical meeting (such as the Virginia Academy of Sciences), at a public seminar in the Department of Chemistry, or at a research-group meeting of the research advisor. At least one member of the Undergraduate Advising Committee will attend the presentation. The student will also orally defend the research to the research director and at least one member of the Department of Chemistry Undergraduate Advising Committee.
The Undergraduate Advising Committee will evaluate both the written report of the research project and the oral presentation. They will recommend to the Chairman of the Department of Chemistry that the degree be awarded
as they consider appropriate. The precise designation will be decided on an individual basis, and reflect the research advisor's and the committee's judgment of the student's academic performance and research accomplishments. The Undergraduate Advising Committee may also recommend that none of the levels of distinction be awarded to a particular student. The Chairman will review the recommendations of the Undergraduate Advising Committee and forward the Department's recommendation to the Committee on Special Programs no later than ten days before Commencement.
This should be written much like a scientific paper. A precise format is not required. You may follow a body and reference format common to your research group's publications. If in doubt about format follow one that is used by any of the American Chemical Society journals (e.g. JACS, Inorg, Chem., Anal. Chem., J. Org. Chem., etc.).
Title Page: A concise title of the work (centered and starting several inches down the page) with your name several lines below it. Near the bottom of the page put:
Research under the supervision of: fill in the blank.
Abstract Page: A concise (no more than 200 word) summary of the project. It is critical that you get the key results and conclusion of the work here. The title and the abstract are where you either catch or lose your reader. In short, this is the GRABBER. The reader should be able to tell whether the topic is of interest and what sorts of conclusions were drawn.
Introduction: This should not be more than several pages, but it should be written in a form understandable to an intelligent reader not trained specifically in your research area. It is important that an intelligent reader can understand what the nature of the project is, why it is important, and what types of questions are being addressed.
Theory: Not all projects lend themselves to a separate theory section. If it makes more sense to use one, feel free to include it.
Experimental Section: How were the experiments done? This should not be too lengthy, but should supply the intelligent reader with an overview of how you did things. In synthesis, a representative synthesis, work up and characterization might be appropriate if many experiments are similar. Your research director has the option of requiring great detail here for archival purposes. If so, extensive details should be relegated to appendices.
Results: Again voluminous compendiums should be avoided. Frequently, a great deal of information can be summarized in a few carefully designed tables or figures. For the sake of the reader, it may be useful to show one raw data set so that what you actually worked with is clear as opposed to sanitized final results. If your research director wants this report to be comprehensive, use appendices to hold large quantities of data.
Discussion: Interpret the results in a fashion comprehensible to an intelligent, but unspecialized, reader. You need to lead your reader through your arguments. What are you trying to prove and do you succeed? In many cases it may be desirable to subsection the discussion in order to break up topics that are sufficiently different.
Results and Discussion: Some papers just do not lend themselves readily to separate Results and Discussion sections. It may be easier to interpret the results as you present them.
Conclusions: It is generally useful to have a separate section summarizing your accomplishments, your failures, and where you would go from here if you were to follow up the work. If you have a bounty of failure, here would be a good place to try to recoup your losses by explaining what happened and how to avoid the problems in the future.
Acknowledgments: Who helped you and how. Profuse praise for anyone justifying special attention is not out of line. Grant support of the work should also be included here.
References and Footnotes: Start this with a centered title "References" or "Literature Cited". Using a standard format throughout. Alternatively, references can be included on the page where they first appear. This is not standard for submission to journals, but many word processors make it easy. Either you or your research director will make that choice.
Appendices: As required. Each one should be labeled clearly and sequentially numbered or lettered. Every Appendix should be referenced in the text.
Figures and Tables: Every figure and table should be sequentially numbered and have a caption attached directly to it. Figures and tables can be placed in the text where they are first referenced or collected together at the end. Every figure and table must be referenced in the text. Since many word processors allow placement in the text, you may want to do this to make reading the manuscript easier. Journal submission collect all of the tables and figures together at the end, and all figure captions on a separate sheet (in the type setting, the figure and caption are treated separately). You should place every caption WITH the associated figure to make it easier for the reader. Cutting and pasting of caption onto figures is perfectly acceptable.
The exceptions to numbering figures are complex reactions and schemes, which may appear directly in the flow of the text.
Equations and Chemical Formulae: These should be either neatly hand drafted in ink or done with a suitable drawing program. Again cut and paste is acceptable for inserting. material as long as it is done neatly. Equations should be numbered consecutively. We have excellent equation editors and chemical drawing programs if you need one. See me. Another trick is the use of an expanding or contracting Xerox machine for scaling. A good Xerox machine will not reproduce transparent tape used to hold material in place; so you can just make it disappear. I do this all the time for building complex journal figures. Also, I certainly will not object to originals with material taped in. If you use copyrighted figures, CREDIT them.
Typing: The document must be word processed. Hand typing will only be acceptable if it is of word processor quality. Note: Some changes may be required after final submission.
Other Work: In many cases your work is part of a greater whole. If you were to only discuss your piece of the puzzle, the big picture might be completely missed. Therefore, it is acceptable to include other's work to round out the project. However, you must clearly differentiate between your work and what was done by others.
Some of you have been involved in research for long enough periods to have substantial bodies of work completed in more than one area. Rather than have you include everything, it is acceptable to me for you to take one of these projects, which represents a coherent whole and a significant piece of work, and only submit this. This must be done with the mentor's approval and mine.
It didn't work!!!: This is not an uncommon refrain. No one said that research is linear and always successful. That is what makes it so interesting and so frustrating. Occasionally, this is a result of lack of effort. More often it is representative of the idiosyncratic nature of real research. However, if you have a body of only negative results, then you have a special responsibility to try to explain why things didn't work and to explain what you would do differently if given the chance.