Previous research has identified students’ misconceptions regarding the forces involved in the breaking and making of chemical bonds. No previous research has investigated students’ abilities to connect organic chemistry reactions to reaction coordinate diagrams. This research investigates students’ understandings of the factors that contribute to both the stability and the reactivity of organic species in substitution and elimination reactions, as well as how students connect these ideas to reaction coordinate diagrams (RCDs). Ausubel’s theory of meaningful learning frames the analysis to focus on meaningful learning of the concepts rather than memorization of dogmatic facts and rules. A pilot study was conducted in spring 2015 and revisions made to the interview protocol. An additional 36 students enrolled in organic chemistry II were interviewed in spring 2016. Two papers were published in Chemistry Education Research and Practice about students' understandings of the surface features of  RCDs and coherence formation between reactions and RCDs. One paper about students' annotations of RCDs was published as ACS Editor’s Choice in the Journal of Chemical Education, and a 4th paper about students' thinking about what makes a good leaving group was published at JCE.

In collaboration with the Hartley group, this research designed an inquiry laboratory activity for organic chemistry students to contribute to their understanding of chirality in the context of exploring structure-property relationships for nematic and cholesteric liquid crystals. During this experiment, students observe the interaction between chiral dopants and nematic liquid crystalline hosts as manifested by visible color changes. Students learn to synthesize a chiral dopant by a reflux and identify enantiomers and racemates using 3-D glasses. Teams pool their data for analysis of structure-property relationships. The experiment was tested with students in the spring 2015 semester, and a manuscript was published in the Journal of Chemical Education and selected for the cover image.