Andrew Thampoe is a senior completing a BS/MS in Chemistry in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. He is also the founder of the Organic Chemistry Initiative (OCI), an organization assisting Hopkins students who take organic chemistry courses in developing their understanding of the material in a cooperative environment. In an interview with The News-Letter, Thampoe described OCI’s history, its impact on the student body and personal meaning to him.
The News-Letter: You are the founder of OCI, which has become an important source for many Hopkins students taking organic chemistry. What initially drew you to organic chemistry?
Andrew Thampoe: I took it two years ago with Christopher Falzone for both semesters. I thought the concept of putting large molecules together through the synthesis that you see in organic chemistry was cool — like puzzles, but more applied. It was really cool to see how as you learn more and more about the subject and you learn more about different reactions, you build up your tool kit to build these molecules. The fact that I could literally build these things in an organic chemistry lab really excited me.
I was like, “I really want to learn more about this.” I will say that [having] a bunch of friends who were also interested [also helped]. We formed a study group our first semester together, and it really fostered my love for organic chemistry.
N-L: How did this interest translate into the foundation of OCI? What does the structure of OCI look like and what goes into the organization of review sessions and other materials?
AT: I realized that the way I studied for organic chemistry mirrored the Feynman technique of studying, which I highly recommend. It’s a study method that says the best way to know that you know something is if you're able to explain it to other people. Me and my friend were usually reading ahead to be prepared before class, and we would oftentimes be the ones explaining the concepts to our friends in this study group, of seven or eight people, and that's how every one of us got through the class pretty well.
Then, we were like, “You know what? This might be a serviceable learning format for other people.” Some people weren't big fans of us doing this while we were taking the class, but that's okay. We ran weekly review sessions where we would go over the content that we covered in the previous week. Especially during exam weeks, we would cover all the reactions that we had and make a reactions list. We made practice problems — in fact, we made practice exams that we'd send to Dr. Falzone and have him check before posting. We had a GroupMe where people would ask questions and I would answer them.
We found out after the end of the semester that this was something that we really enjoyed doing and was supposedly very successful. A lot of people who came to the sessions that we held did really well in the class as a whole. That inspired me, as well as some of my friends, to put together this program. Originally, we were a Registered Student Organization under the Department of Chemistry with our faculty sponsor, Falzone. We ran biweekly sessions starting in the fall of 2023. I would put slides together and, if time permitted, practice exams. I ran these for the entire first semester and, in fact, led the majority of these sessions.
Dr. Joseph Cunningham in the Office of Academic Support reached out to us, and we started to work with them to improve our programming and make room reservations. At the end of the fall semester, we recruited people who have either taken organic chemistry or who were currently in the class and we built up our team. We had people helping out at sessions and putting together problem sets, practice exams and slides.
Then, the Office of Academic Support fully adopted us as a program. As of May 2024, we are no longer an RSO, but, instead, an actual program that is funded by the University. Since then, we've expanded our operations. When I was leading it by myself, it was very difficult to cover all those professors, but, now, we cover them all. We make practice exams, reactions lists and problem sets for each professor.
I get asked a lot about why I started this program. There are a lot of students who fall through the cracks of the current support systems. With PILOT having set times, sometimes they might not be able to make those. With Learning Den Tutoring, you have to get approved and qualify for a tutor. Office hours may conflict with classes. We wanted to create a learning modality where you can pick and choose your adventure. You can come to sessions if you want to, but everything that we make is posted online for anyone to access.
There's a stigma with asking for help, and we wanted to create a safe learning environment where students feel comfortable asking for help. In our GroupMe, people can ask questions, and I even offered myself for the entirety of last year. People could privately DM me and I would literally answer questions until 3 or 4 a.m. The reason why I started this program was for that community, the students who were too afraid to ask for help, because us being student-run means we are more approachable than, say, graduate teaching assistants.
N-L: With all of this demand, OCI seems to have a great workload. How do members of OCI manage their time to meet these demands from students taking organic chemistry while pursuing their own academic programs?
AT: A big part of what makes the people in our organization very efficient is that they have a demonstrated passion for the subject. They know it very well, and for them, it's pretty easy. We're capitalizing on the fact that they like the subject, they're good at it and they enjoy what they're doing. It’s a “if you love what you do, you won't work a day in your life” type of thing.
Now I will say, there is a significant amount of work we do. In fact, what people don't know is how much work goes into our materials team. They're the unsung heroes of the organization. They're the ones who put together the reactions list that literally every person prints out before the exam, and they put together practice exams and problem sets. We are trying to become a fully oiled machine, with standard operating procedures, and I think that has helped us, for certain things, speed up our process.
We've now implemented graduate students to help us check our work, so that professors aren't upset about us having errors. We have this accreditation process running behind the scenes. Our session leads put in a lot of time to put the slides together. I spent thousands of hours over the past two and a half years, and they are putting in very similar numbers. I'm really proud of the work that they're doing, and I'm very glad to see that they're as passionate as I am about advancing the organization. They each have their own time management skills, but we try our best to make it very clear cut list of tasks to do.
N-L: Looking back to the start of OCI, what types of changes or improvements do you expect to see in this initiative in the future?
AT: I think the biggest issue for a program like this will always be staying accurate and true to whatever the professors are teaching. Obviously, year by year, professors may slightly change what they teach. But especially between professors, there are some noticeable differences. Moving forward, we've been doing our best to implement as many stages as possible to the checking process. Some small errors are going to fall through the cracks here and there, but I think, over time, our accuracy has grown significantly.
The biggest challenge was making sure that everything was correct because we are literally trying to cover all of the content in the class from a student's perspective. With that quantity of content, there's obviously going to be issues with errors, but maintaining trust with the student body [is significant]. Striving for that kind of perfection is what we're trying to do. It’s very hard to do as one person, but with a team, hopefully, that's something that we can approach.
N-L: As a senior, how will your work in OCI shape your professional career after graduation? How do you plan to integrate this experience into your long-term goals?
AT: I've developed a lot of soft skills in this program as a communicator and my ability to work with others. As someone who's interested in doing a physician scientist training program, like an MD-PhD, I want to work on drug discovery, which is a little more on the biochemistry side of things, but I definitely think OCI has given me a very deep background in understanding organic chemistry. I think for me OCI has very much established a love for teaching. I'm hoping that this experience will help me be a better physician. For pre-meds, being a good communicator and teacher is of the utmost importance, especially in communicating complex topics.
There is rat race concept about how people are gunning to get into medical school. We have this stigma at Hopkins of being a “toxic pre-med environment.” The reason why we created this program is because it's highly collaborative, and it promotes peer-to-peer collaboration and helping other students. I created OCI to demystify chemistry; everyone thought of it as the pre-med killer class, and that was the reputation it had before. For me, internalizing [the purpose of OCI] as I go into graduate school is important.
N-L: If OCI was a reaction from Organic Chemistry, which one would it be?
AT: Cycloaddition reactions in general, because I like to think that we bring people together, and we try to create a collaborative learning environment. Not to be cheesy, but I think carbon-carbon bond-forming reactions are the most important in all of organic chemistry and I like to that we [fulfill a] niche that carries some level of importance.
