Biographical Sketch
Dr. Jenny Burnham did a BSc in Chemistry with Studies in Continental Europe at the University of Bristol, followed by a PhD on boron monohalide and polyboron halide chemistry with Dr. Peter Timms at the same institution. Postdoctoral work on the precursors for cadmium mercury telluride devices with Prof. David Cole-Hamilton allowed her to experience the delights of living in St. Andrews, before she returned to her Group 13 roots working on indium monohalide chemistry with Prof. Tony Downs at the University of Oxford. Jenny has been a Teaching Fellow at the University of Sheffield since 2005. As well as tutorial teaching and lecturing on main group chemistry, she runs the Level 2 Inorganic Laboratory, which enables her to persue educational research interests on the student experience in the laboratory. She firmly believes that boron is the best element in the periodic table.
Teaching Keywords
Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory; Main Group Chemistry
Teaching interests
Jenny is fascinated by the process of learning, and is particularly interested in facilitating students to perform to their maximum potential. To this end, she is pursuing a Masters degree in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education at the University of Sheffield. She has used coursework modules to analyse and improve aspects of her teaching on such topics as feedback to students, peer assessment by students, and curriculum analysis, as well as a reflection on the role of a teacher as a catalyst. Her dissertation title is “Students as experimenters; an action research study” and is based on a 2011/12 Level 2 laboratory experiment. Her current soapbox issues are the importance of BSc chemistry graduates with both chemistry-related abilities and more general knowledge, and the importance of effective communication between scientists (specifically chemists) and non-scientists and the role BSc students in particular can play in this.
Undergraduate Courses Taught
- Main Group Chemistry 1 (Year 2)
This segment will explore the relationship between the atomic properties and molecular behaviour of some s- and p-block compounds.
- Second Year Inorganic Laboratories
The second year Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory curriculum has been designed to build on the first year lab through a balanced programme of experiments covering the main branches of inorganic chemistry. Students will become masters of the key techniques and methods of synthetic chemistry and be introduced to more advanced techniques such as synthesis under inert atmosphere and chromatographic separation, and they will become practised in the spectroscopic characterisation of inorganic molecules.
Tutorial and Workshop Support
- First Year Tutorials.
- Second Year Inorganic Tutorials.
- Third Year Literature Review.
Laboratory Teaching
- Inorganic Laboratory Teaching
Dr. Jennifer A. Burnham