Orgo lab gets the shaft

It seems like everyone is trying to go organic nowadays. You can buy organic fruit, organic vegetables, organic shampoo, organic clothing -- even cereal. Recently, General Mills came out with a new, organic version of Cheerios called Purely O's. Hell, I'm sure I'd get my Kix eating that.

But to be labeled organic, Purely O's went through a series of regulatory phases overseen by the USDA's National Organic Program. After a series of tests, Purely O's was found to "consist of at least 95 percent organically produced ingredients." Had the cereal contained fewer organic products, it would have been labeled differently.

It's a shame the National Organic Program's jurisdiction doesn't extend to overseeing the Chemistry Department's organic-chemistry labs here at Penn. Because like the orgasmic General Mills cereal, the current structure of the Orgo lab makes students feel like they're getting royally screwed.

Orgo Lab -- also known as Chemistry 245 at Penn -- is the hands-on accompaniment to Organic Chemistry, which is the "scientific study of the structure, properties, composition, reactions and synthesis of organic compounds that by definition contain carbon" according to Wikipedia. Orgo is also typically a weed-out course for pre-meds -- as well as a requirement for many in the Engineering School. Engineering senior Will Smythe estimates that "511 people" took Organic Chemistry last year. He also estimates that malonic ester synthesis, though thrilling, "will never help 510 people find doctors to marry."

Fewer people take the lab component, but it still remains a popular course. At Penn, Chemistry 245 meets for nine in-class hours a week. Students taking organic chemistry lab receive one credit, the same credit I receive for taking English classes, which meet for three hours a week. In other words, taking organic chemistry lab takes the same amount of time as taking three non-lab courses. And it doesn't take a governmental regulatory board to see that chemistry students aren't receiving enough credit for their work.

Of course, the number of credit units should not be the only basis for determining what students learn in completing a course. But at the very least, it should correlate to the amount of work students put in for a class. If not, you could very well argue that the course credit, perhaps, is mislabeled.

Dean of the College Dennis DeTurck explains that the issue is not how much time students spend in class. "A course unit," he says, "is meant to represent a quantum of intellectual work." DeTurck says that "In a 'typical' lecture or seminar course, where students spend three or four hours per week in class, there is an expectation that a significant amount of work -- reading, writing, problem sets, etc. -- is being done outside of class."

Whereas DeTurck says that in Orgo Lab, "It's really impossible to do most of the work of the course unless you're actually in the lab -- so in a sense, the nine-hour blocks are simply a way of providing and scheduling the resources necessary for students to be able to complete the course."

Which is true, but this doesn't mean that students are also not completing a significant amount of work outside of class. College senior deMauri Mackie says that "between reading the background text, reading the procedure, writing pre-labs, analyzing data, doing a final write-up for each experiment and studying for exams, I spent at least as much time studying outside of class as I did in class."

But this is not what the Chemistry Department believes. "In general," says Donald Berry, the Undergraduate Chairman of the Chemistry Department. "Science laboratory courses involve more hours in lab than lecture courses, but fewer hours spent outside of class."

Every one of the students I talked to disagrees. College senior Kirsten Blessing thinks that 4-bromoacetanilide should be marketed as a new Chanel line. She also thinks that she spent "about equal time outside the lab preparing as each hour of lab time, if not a little more. A Vagelos scholar, who did not want his name used, concurs, saying he "spent an equal amount of time prepping and writing labs."

And these students are trying to balance Organic Chemistry lab with their other classes, jobs and activities. It doesn't seem like it would be too hard to add some credit value to these courses. Of course, it also wouldn't be too hard to give me credit for the mislabeled stereocenter in Problem 7(b). Bitch.Melody Joy Kramer is a senior English major from Cherry Hill, N.J. Perpendicular Harmony appears on Wednesdays.

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