Courses

Target Course Level and Students
The courses are aimed at junior and senior level undergraduate students and beginning graduate students although in some cases we expect them to be useful for technical professionals wanting to learn more about nanoscience and nanotechnology. The objective of having these courses is to make information about the rapidly evolving areas of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology available to a wide range of students. The expectation is that these courses can help undergraduate students learn if these are topics relevant to their future plans and to equip such students as they enter graduate school or the work place. At the graduate student level, it is expected that these courses can provide useful information for thesis work and planning of research efforts. We expect the participation in the courses may encourage near and long term interactions with the EMSL user facility at PNNL and assist students and researchers in contributing to this exciting field. Based on feedback received to date, we now realize that in addition to students, faculty from some smaller colleges and those in industries looking at nanotechnology options may be interested in attending these courses.

Each summer PNNL has a large number of students participate in summer research. It may be productive and natural for some of these students to participate in these courses before the summer appointments. Other students (UW, WSU and several other institutions) spend months at PNNL (in EMSL in particular) conducting research. These students can now take courses while doing research in Richland. Students conducting research may be able to take these concentrated courses in Richland and return to research activities at other sites with minimal impact on time from the laboratory.

Course Materials
Appropriate textbooks are not available for these courses. Lecturers will provide introductory or review journal articles, copies of viewgraphs or specially prepared notes as reading materials. Due to the importance of class preparation, students will be provided with course materials before the start of the classes. Quizzes will be conducted to encourage and evaluate that the students are keeping up with the reading material.

Course Credits
The first year offerings are certified by UW and WSU will fall under the special topics courses offered by the UW MSE department and the WSU physics department. Following the initial offering, the courses will each be listed in University of Washington and Washington State University course catalogs. Some institutions have suggested to list them in their course offerings as approved by their own processes.

The 10-day courses will have a minimum of 45 contact hours to meet curriculum requirements. However, the Modeling course is confined to 15-20 contact hours. The 10-day courses will provide approximately 45 contact hours consistent with up to 4 quarter credits, 3 semester credits, or 4.5 CEUs. The Theory of Nanoscale Material Systems course has 15 contact hours, translating to 2 quarter credits, 1 semester credit, or 1.5 CEUs. The UW will award 3 quarter credits for the 10-day courses and 2 quarter credits for the Theory of Nanoscale Material Systems course.

Grades and Evaluation Methods
In the effort to make sure that students are keeping up with reading, frequent short quizzes to make sure that students are reading the preparation material are planned. The course instructor will assign evaluation methods. Students will be made aware of this at the beginning of the course. Evaluation for undergraduate credits will differ from that for graduate credits. Possible evaluation methods are:

• A post course "take home" exam
• A end of course exam
• A course paper - written after the course
• A short topical paper, prepared during the course
• Assigning students some topical research questions, related to the courses, for them to prepare answers to during the course.