December 13, 2002

A Peer-Led Approach to Teaching Organic Chemistry

At 8:45 a.m., about 100 students gather in Princeton University's Wu Dining Hall. They sit around tables in groups of three or four. Once everyone has arrived, they dig in.

But instead of scrambled eggs and coffee, students are served a stack of problems. The unlikely setting is only part of what separates Maitland Jones Jr.'s approach to teaching organic chemistry, considered one of the toughest courses in any undergraduate curriculum, from how the subject is taught at other