A New Project-Based Lab for Undergraduate Environmental and Analytical Chemistry

A project-based lab has been developed for third-year undergraduate chemistry students based on real-world applications. The program consists of several steps: sampling of natural waters chosen by the student, chemical analyses, data treatment, and oral presentations. In such a way the students have the possibility to follow the total analytical procedure and to discuss their research work with each other. Over the four years of development of this project, 55 students have been involved, presenting 30 oral reports. The responses from the teaching evaluation questionnaires suggest that this experience is appreciated by the students and could be an interesting alternative to typical analytical chemistry lab courses.