Due back to me on Friday, May, 7 (date change) will be: the revised paper (two copies if you want it back), my marked up copy and a brief cover letter describing the changes that you made and how you addressed the reviewer's concerns (be nice).

On the paper you will find a number (based on a 0.0 to 4.0 scale).  This number is the first third of your grade for the paper (the remaining two-thirds will be based on your final revised paper).  I looked at four things to determine the grade: 1) overall writing quality (grammar, sentence structure and paragraph construction), 2) overall structure and flow (was the point of the review articulated and was I, as a fairly knowledgeable reader, able to follow your arguments), 3) was there science there and did you attempt to bring together the disparate articles into a complete whole, and 4) did you follow the style and formatting guidelines set forth in the CHEM 476 Style Guide and in our Virtual Laboratory Manual (also included here was the quality of your graphics and tables).

Not written on your paper (I will hand these back later) are your grades for your reviews.  They are on the same 0.0 to 4.0 scale as the main paper.  What I looked for here was the quantity and quality of the editing done on the paper (lots of red = good) and the perspicacity of your review.  A long review did not gain more points, if it failed to recognize glaring errors in the paper under review.  Short reviews tended to be graded rather low, because they often did not address any issues at all.

The grading scale translates to a 0 to 100 scale as follows: 0.0 = 50, 0.5 = 57, 1.0 = 63, 1.5 = 67, 2.0 = 75, 2.5 = 77, 3.0 = 83, 3.5 = 87 and 4.0 = 95.  Remember that the lowest passing grade for a chemistry major in a major course is a C (= 70%). 

You can bring your grade up significantly if you make the appropriate changes to your manuscript.  If you make no changes, you will receive a 0.0 for the revised paper.  This is not something you can do the day before it is due and expect to get by.  You will need at least two more drafts, which are to be rigorously edited by you, or someone you trust, before you write the final version.

This page now includes a brief outline for your presentation.  Each presentation should be no more than one half-hour long! 

The date for each presentations is listed in the table.  We will not have class on Wednesday April 14.  Use this time to prepare your presentation.

Class on Wednesday April 28 will be used for review.  Exam 2 is still scheduled for May 3.  A review sheet for it will be coming out soon.  Remember that this will include questions on topics that we covered last semester (i. e., spectroscopy, magnetism, kinetics, electron transfer reactions) as applied to bioinorganic chemistry, and questions about specific biological systems (i. e., the questions that each presentation is supposed to answer).

Click here to see the group assignments for the bioinorganic presentations.  I will have more information on the presentations up shortly.

Exam 1 will be returned with your peer-reviewed manuscript.

A review sheet is now available for Exam 1.  Click here to open the PDF file.