MELANIE M. COOPER
Professor of Chemistry and Director of Undergraduate Laboratories
Clemson University
Clemson, SC

Melanie Cooper received her B.S. (1975), M.S. (1976) and Ph.D. (1978) from the University of Manchester, England. She carried out postdoctoral work at Clemson University in organic chemistry before turning to chemical education as her area of research.

Dr. Cooper took the position of Director of Undergraduate Laboratories at Clemson University in 1987, was tenured in 1993 and promoted to Professor in 1997. She received the Award of Excellence for Teaching in the Sciences from the College of Engineering and Sciences in 1997.

Dr. Cooper has served as principal investigator or co-principal investigator for several externally funded projects. These include “EnviroChemLibrary: Resources for Teaching and Learning Science”, NSF, March 2000 to February 2003; “Cooperative Organic Laboratories”, NSF-CCD, May 1995 to June 2000; “Cooperative Chemistry Laboratories”, NSF, August 1992 to January 1995; “Cooperative Chemistry Laboratories”, FIPSE, September 1992 to June 1995.

Dr. Cooper has also made numerous invited presentations. Among presentations in the past three years: Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, University of Michigan, August 2000; ACS meeting, San Francisco, Spring 2000; University of South Alabama, October 1999; ACS meeting, New Orleans August 1999; Armstrong Atlantic State University, October 1998; Kellogg Conference on Planning for the Future of Higher Education, October 1998; Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, August 1998.

Dr. Cooper's research projects involve several areas of chemical education. She is interested in the development of new laboratory curricula, investigating the effects of the changes on how students learn chemistry, and developing multimedia materials for use in teaching laboratories and lectures. Techniques for use in teaching large lecture sections of chemistry, such as cooperative learning and writing exercises, are also being developed and studied.

Dr. Cooper has developed curricula and course materials (lab manual, instructor's guide and multimedia software) for a general chemistry laboratory course and an organic lab course. The goals of these courses are to overcome the deficiencies in the usual beginning undergraduate laboratory experience, to supply the structure and support so necessary to students in their early stages of intellectual development, and to incorporate both written and oral communication skills. One of her current projects includes the new ACS general chemistry textbook, of which she is a member of the editorial/writing team.

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