Medicinal Chemistry Seminars
CHEM 4513

Ghislain Deslongchamps, Department of Chemistry, U.N.B.
Fall 2008

Calendar Description | Coordinator | Timetable | Prerequisites | Blackboard | Course Overview | Seminar | Wiki | Schedule | Grading | Letter Grades | Plagiarism

Calendar Description:

3 ch (3C) Description: Selected Topics in Medicinal Chemistry. Prerequisite: CHEM3421.

Coordinator:

Ghislain Deslongchamps
Office: Toole 237
Phone: 453-4795
ghislain@unb.ca
http://taxane.chem.unb.ca

David MaGee

dmagee@unb.ca

Larry Calhoun

calhoun@unb.ca

Timetable:

Sept. 10 - Dec. 3, 2008

Lectures: W, 2:30- 4:50, Toole 303

Pre/Corequisites:

Prerequisite: CHEM 3421

Blackboard:

Point your browser to http://learning.unb.ca and use your UNB PIN to login. Note: only students registered for CHEM 4513 have login privileges.

Course Overview:

There are two parts to this course. The first part involves the preparation and presentation of a seminar (PowerPoint/Keynote) on a single paper from the recent medicinal chemistry research literature. The second part involves the creation of a wiki chapter on an important topic in current medicinal chemistry, followed by a presentation of the wiki in seminar format.

Seminar:

- Students will form teams of 3 for the duration of the term. Team assignments must be emailed to ghislain@unb.ca by Friday Sept. 12. Students who have not submitted team information by the deadline will be assigned one by the seminar coordinators. The final team assignment will be posted on Blackboard by Monday Sept. 15.
- Seminars must be of a minimum duration of 30 minutes, followed by a 10 minute question period.
- Seminars must focus on a single research paper in the area of medicinal chemistry published in 2008 and must emphasize medicinal chemistry aspects (rather than molecular biology/genetics/immunology, etc).
- Selected papers (pdf copies) must be emailed to ghislain@unb.ca for approval at least 14 days prior to the scheduled seminar date. Once approved, the pdf copies will be made available to the class on Blackboard.
- Here is a partial list of appropriate journals for seminar preparation:
           Angewandte Chemie, International Edition English
           Biochemistry
           Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Letters
           Chemistry: A European Journal
           Chemistry & Biology
           European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry
           Journal of Biological Chemistry
           Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling
           Journal of Computational Chemistry
           Journal of Computer-Aided Molecular Design
           Journal of The American Chemical Society
           Journal of Medicinal Chemistry
           Journal of Organic Chemistry
           Nature
           New Journal of Chemistry
           Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
           Proteins
           Science
           Trends in Biochemical Sciences

- Seminars will be presented during the period of Oct. 8 - Oct. 29. The presentation order will be determined at random and will be posted on Blackboard by Monday Sept. 17, 9:00 am.
- Course coordinators will assign an individual seminar grade for each member of the student team based on Content (40%), Presentation (40%) and Handling of Questions (20%) and use this to assign a letter grade for each seminar. The letter grade, as well as feedback from the course coordinators will be relayed to the presenters within one week of their presentation.
- Questions will arise from students in the class. Each week, student participation in the question period will be assessed by the course coordinators (number and quality of questions). All students are strongly encouraged to read the paper prior to the seminar date. Course coordinators may ask supplemental questions at the end of the student question period if time allows.

Wiki:

- A wiki is a web-based collaborative authoring tool for creating/editing the content of a website. It provides an intuitive way of creating web pages and a system for monitoring individual changes that occurs over time (and who made the changes).
- Students will participate in constructing a wiki on medicinal chemistry topics in a fashion similar to the Wikipedia project, a web-based encyclopedia written and edited by a community of contributors. Student teams (same as for seminar) will select an important topic related to medicinal chemistry and develop a wiki-ready chapter complete with text, media, and bibliography. All wiki materials will be created, linked, indexed, and edited/corrected by the class participants, and made accessible through Blackboard.
- The wiki chapter must focus on a general topic rather than a single paper. Students must have a topic approved by Dr. Deslongchamps at least 21 days prior to the scheduled wiki presentation date and may begin contributing to the wiki as soon as their topic has been approved. Once approved, wiki topics will be posted on Blackboard and on the wiki itself.
- All wiki contributions must be completed by their respective presentation date, after which the wiki will be frozen (i.e. read-only). During the period of Nov. 12 - Dec. 3, student teams will do a "live" presentation of their wiki of a 30 minute duration, followed by a 10 minute question period from class participants. The presentation may be assisted by PowerPoint if a team deems the projection of the wiki itself inadequate for public presentation (i.e. small font size, information density, etc.).
- The presentation order will be the same as for the seminar and will be posted on Blackboard by Monday Sept. 15.
- Course coordinators will grade wiki presentations based on Content (40%), Presentation (40%) and Handling of Questions (20%) and use this to assign a letter grade.
- Questions will arise from students in the class. As in the first round of seminars, the question period will be assessed by the course coordinators (number and quality of questions). Class participants are strongly encouraged to read the wiki chapter prior to the presentations. Course coordinators may ask supplemental questions at the end of the student question period if time allows.
- For each student team, the seminar coordinator(s) will grade the wiki chapter itself based on overall quality, layout, and readability.

Schedule:

Sept. 10: Course outline - Presentation skills - (GD)
     Sept. 12: deadline for submitting team assignments
     Sept. 15: posting of final team assignment and seminar/wiki presentation schedule on Blackboard
Sept. 17: no class
Sept. 24: no class
Oct. 1: no class
Oct. 8: Seminar presentations - teams 1, 2, 3
Oct. 15: Seminar presentations - teams 4, 5, 6
Oct. 22: Seminar presentations - teams 7, 8, 9
Oct. 29: Seminar presentations - teams 10, 11, 12
Nov. 5: no class
Nov. 12: Wiki presentations - teams 1, 2, 3
Nov. 19: Wiki presentations - teams 4, 5, 6
Nov. 26: Wiki presentations - teams 7, 8, 9
Dec. 3: Wiki presentations - teams 10, 11, 12

Grading:

 
  Seminar:  
     Presentation* 30%
  Wiki:  
     Wiki chapter** 20%
     Wiki presentation* 30%
  Class participation*** 20%
     
  TOTAL**** 100%

* The seminar coordinator(s) will assign an individual grade for each member of the student team based on the following criteria:
       - content (depth of material, extent of coverage, correctness of information, length of presentation): 40%
       - presentation (comprehensibility, organization, visuals, overall verbal communication, ): 40%
       - handling of questions: 20%

** The seminar coordinator(s) will assign a grade for the student team based on overall layout, readability and effectiveness of the wiki chapter.

*** Based on question periods following presentations.

**** Attendance is mandatory. 1 unjustified absence: -10/100 points; 2 unjustified absences: -20/100 points

Letter grades:

  A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
D
F
90 %
85 %
80 %
74 %
68 %
62 %
56 %
50 %
40 %
<40 %

Plagiarism

The University of New Brunswick places a high value on academic integrity and has a policy on plagiarism, cheating and other academic offences.

Plagiarism includes:
1. quoting verbatim or almost verbatim from any source, including all electronic sources, without acknowledgement;
2. adopting someone else’s line of thought, argument, arrangement, or supporting evidence without acknowledgement;
3. submitting someone else’s work, in whatever form without acknowledgement;
4. knowingly representing as one’s own work any idea of another.

Examples of other academic offences include: cheating on exams, tests, assignments or reports; impersonating somebody at a test or exam; obtaining an exam, test or other course materials through theft, collusion, purchase or other improper manner, submitting course work that is identical or substantially similar to work that has been submitted fro another course; and more as set out in the academic regulations found in the Undergraduate Calendar.

Penalties for plagiarism and other academic offences range from a minimum of F (zero) in the assignment, exam or test to a maximum of suspension or expulsion from the University, plus a notation of the academic offence on the student’s transcript.

For more information, please see the Undergraduate Calendar, Section B, Regulation VII.A, or visit http://nocheating.unb.ca. It is the student’s responsibility to know the regulations.