Due to the ever-expanding use of state-of-the-art instrumentation by the chemical industry and graduate programs in the sciences, undergraduate institutions need to offer a curriculum that integrates technology into education, thus giving students the background and preparation necessary to be successful in scientific endeavors. To better meet the educational needs of our students, a cadre of chemistry faculty at California State University (CSU), Chico submitted a grant proposal to the NSF Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) program in 1998 to purchase a high field FT-NMR spectrometer. The proposal was funded by NSF (1). A Varian MercuryVX300 broadband NMR spectrometer was purchased with overmatching funds provided by the College of Natural Sciences and the university; it was installed in February 2000.The basis of this CCLI proposal was three-fold: incorporating 13 C NMR spectroscopy early into the year-long organic chemistry courses as a tool for students to better understand structural, configurational, and conformational isomerism; increasing faculty research productivity by having an on-site high field NMR spectrometer; initiating an advanced, integrated laboratory sequence replacing the traditional laboratories of analytical, inorganic, and physical. We have made significant progress in all three areas.By the sixth week of the first semester of organic chemistry, our students have been introduced to the fundamentals of 13 C NMR spectroscopy and its application to isomerism in organic molecules. This approach, judging by exam scores, has increased the ability of our students to recognize symmetry in molecules and understand the chemical and magnetic environments of simple organic species as related to structure. Students have also used 1 H and 13 C NMR spectroscopy coupled with a DEPT analysis in the identification of the major constituent of orange oil.During the past two summers, three faculty members have had five undergraduate research collaborators. The students have had summer research scholarships from Roche Bioscience and the alumni-funded Ginter-Reid Scholarship. These collaborations have resulted in a Journal of Chemical Education publication (2), a submission of another article to the Journal of Undergraduate Chemical Research (3), seven student and faculty posters at ACS national meetings, and the submission of two ACS PRF grant proposals. One faculty member was awarded a CSU summer research fellowship partly based on utilizing the NMR in his research.Chemistry 215A-C (an integrated laboratory sequence) has been approved by the administration and we began teaching Chemistry 215A in fall 2001. In the first project the students have used 1 H and 13 C NMR, GC-MS, molecular modeling, IR and UV-vis spectroscopy, and bomb calorimetry to analyze the solvent-dependent conformational preference of 2-bromo-3,3,5,5-teramethylcyclohexanone (4). To better integrate our students' thinking prior to writing a formal report, we have required them to give oral reports that allow for faculty inpu...