mistry
traviolet-visible spectroscopy for identifying antioxidants in
plants. Although every student learns how to perform these
procedures, Eskew encourages each individual group to culti-
vate their own sets of questions and experiments.
“This is very much about not having a recipe,” Eskew points out.
“It is about developing questions and going through the pro-
cess of testing and modifying. And it is also about iteration.”
Portulaca oleracea, common Purslane
In a traditional chemistry lab, students will complete one exper-
iment and then move onto a different one in the following lab.
But in this class, they will continue to run the same experiments
three times or more, tweaking them each week. “In research,
you do not just do an experiment one time; you do it multiple
times to try to improve it and see if you can reproduce results.”
To test the Purslane for antioxidants, students perform a pro-
cedure involving a color shift that indicates when antioxidants
are present. “Students can actually visualize what’s happening
when the electrons are moving because they see a physical
change in color,” Eskew says. “It makes the chemistry of it all
more real.”
“The first time my team completed the test we were really excit-
ed, because the procedure worked,” Cooke explains. “It felt very
gratifying and made us all very enthusiastic.”
Growing Together
Before she developed the class, Eskew had never heard of
Purslane. Not until Claire Lorch pointed it out on a tour of the
Carolina Campus Community Garden, CCCG, a program of the
North Carolina Botanical Garden located on Wilson Street that
donates all its produce to university housekeepers. Lorch, the
CCCG program manager, solicits volunteers from across cam-
pus and the greater community to work in the garden year-
round.
“I learned of Purslane when my dear friend Vimala, of Vimala’s
Curry Blossom Cafe, pointed out the plant and its nutritional
value,” Lorch explains. “From then on we stopped weeding it
and started planting it. Forty percent of the housekeepers are
refugees from Burma and appreciate that we have Purslane in
the garden.”
Eskew’s partnership with the CCCG for the class means that it
is also one of the Carolina Center for Public Service’s APPLES
courses, which connect academic learning with communi-
ty service. Students enrolled in the course, held once a week,
must spend a minimum of thirty hours volunteering in the gar-
den, some of which is used for lab time.
Continued on page 23
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