1999 Fall ConfChem: WHAT SHOULD STUDENTS KNOW WHEN THEY LEAVE GENERAL CHEMISTRY?

We are teachers involved with the first-courses in the first semesters of every career included in the Chemistry School at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México (UNAM), the largest university in Mexico, with a student population of over 270,000. These careers are Chemical Engineering, Metallurgical Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Pharmacy-Biology-Chemistry and Food Technology.

Contrary to the situation generally occurring in the United States, the students in the first-year General Chemistry Course intend on having a Chemistry-related career, so at this level, we do not have to deal with a curriculum suitable for other fields like Medicine or Biology. Our main objective is to cover contents that we consider to be fundamental for any student to successfully conclude his or her courses in the Chemistry school. Our main obstacle is the heterogeneous background of our students. In this paper we will comment on how we teach them basic skills along with covering the main chemistry concepts that they should have acquired in their previous secondary and high school courses (but they commonly have not ).