Spring 2027

Elementary Organic Chemistry

Elementary Organic Chemistry covers core concepts of structure, reactivity, and synthesis for functional groups in commercial and biological substances.

no offering record for this termCredits unavailable
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 No instructors listed

Summary

1 / 8

Past student reviews · Matt Bowman

Students reported that the class required significant time and effort, but success was achievable by paying attention in lecture and keeping up with problem sets.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Construct and use an electron pushing mechanism or reaction energy profile to evaluate the validity of claims as to the outcome of a chemical process.

  • Construct and use appropriate structural representations to explain observed differences in the physical and chemical properties of substances in terms of electrostatics, orbital overlap and energy.

  • Construct and use a reaction energy profile to justify why a particular reaction system is likely to produce the product formed most quickly or which is most stable.

  • Design and justify a multi-step synthetic route capable of feasibly generating a molecular target from specified starting materials.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

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average GPA
letter grades
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AB
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BC
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F

All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

CHEM 104, 109, or 116. Not open to students with credit forCHEM 343 or 345

CHEM 341 used by

“Used by” includes alternatives; linked courses may have other requirements. This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree

Professors

Spring 2027

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

ANDREW ETHAN GREENBERG is recorded teaching in Fall 2006, Fall 2007, Fall 2008, Fall 2009. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

MATTHEW BOWMAN is recorded teaching in Fall 2010, Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Fall 2025. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Matt Bowman

Matt Bowman taught this course without a required textbook, relying instead on provided problem sets, practice exams, and online resources to help students succeed.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2023: 2.78 GPA, 27.5% A/AB (n=178 letter grades); Fall 2024: 2.88 GPA, 32.9% A/AB (n=161 letter grades); Fall 2025: 2.85 GPA, 29.0% A/AB (n=193 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Matt Bowman

Students reported that the class required significant time and effort, but success was achievable by paying attention in lecture and keeping up with problem sets.

Past student reviews · Matt Bowman

One student found the course challenging but supported, noting that Matt Bowman provided practice exams, problem sets, Piazza, and office hours to help students do well.

Topics

  • Structure, reactivity, and synthesis of functional groups in commercial and biological substances.
  • Selected topics from CHEM 343 and CHEM 345.

Skills

  • Constructing and using electron pushing mechanisms or reaction energy profiles to evaluate chemical process outcomes.
  • Using structural representations to explain physical and chemical property differences via electrostatics, orbital overlap, and energy.
  • Justifying reaction products based on speed or stability using reaction energy profiles.
  • Designing and justifying multi-step synthetic routes to generate molecular targets from specified starting materials.

Grades

Latest available · Fall 2025— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Fall 2025

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Fall 2025 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1316 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

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Selected offering source records

No offering records for the selected term.

Raw records 
[]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
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Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

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Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "a182aad6899c5b997ef756a6a82baaf2beb367eccb4127ea2450e3cc2e8d39a8",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}