Chemical Bonding: A First-Year Seminar Series that Enhances Chemistry Majors’ Perceptions of Chemistry Subdisciplines

First-year seminar courses are a common strategy used to orient new college students to the skills and strategies needed to be successful in college. Here, we describe a first-year seminar series named "Chemical Bonding" that was incorporated into General Chemistry II. These seminars focused on introducing new Chemistry and Biochemistry majors to the subdisciplines of Chemistry. Faculty from 10 subfields of Chemistry led presentations of their areas of expertise, highlighting research opportunities and careers that use skills and concepts from their subdiscipline. We surveyed students to assess how their perceptions of ten subdisciplines of Chemistry were impacted by these seminars. Postseminar, students were more familiar with and understanding all subdisciplines of Chemistry. In addition, students thought the Chemistry subdisciplines were more important to their future careers, and the requirement to enroll in classes in these subdisciplines was rated as more satisfying. Some subdisciplines of Chemistry, such as Analytical Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, and Materials Science, had greater gains in perceptions. Others, including Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Healthcare-related sciences, showed lesser gains due to high initial perceptions of these fields. Together, these results showed that incorporating the Chemical Bonding seminar series into General Chemistry II improved students' perceptions of the subdisciplines of Chemistry across all three years of study.