The Importance of Undergraduate General and Organic Chemistry to the Study of Biochemistry in Medical School

Abstract

Much literature has been devoted to the problems associated with teaching undergraduate chemistry courses. General chemistry reform has been called for by the Committee on Professional Training (1), the American Chemical Society (2), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (3), the National Science Foundation (4), Sigma Xi (5), the Worchester Polytechnic Institute (6), and individual authors (7 - 13). Organic chemistry reform is not as well documented, but does include proponents from some of the above authors (8, 14) and professional societies (2 - 5).In the early 1990s, the ACS established a task force to investigate the need for change in the general chemistry curriculum. No such task force currently exists to evaluate undergraduate organic chemistry course. A 1991 general chemistry curriculum survey was distributed to chemists and engineers (9). The present survey built on earlier efforts to reform undergraduate chemical curricula by both inquiring about a greater number of more specific topics and extending the list of topics to organic chemistry.