More Options, Fewer Students: Joint Physics and Chemistry Courses at Mount Royal University

Mount Royal University is a new University with only a few majors in the sciences. This limits the number of students interested in chemistry and physics courses and makes it difficult to run advanced courses in these areas. We have responded to this problem by designing joint courses in Thermodynamics, Quantum Mechanics, and Solid State that count for credit as either a chemistry course or a physics course. Students in the courses were interviewed in order to determine whether the difficulty level and balance of topics in the courses was appropriate. This short and tweet will discuss the design decisions and problems with a higher-level multidisciplinary course, as well as some feedback gleaned from student interviews. A newer joint course involving both nuclear science and policy studies will also be described briefly