It is estimated that approximately 360,000 students enroll in first-year chemistry courses in colleges and universities in the U.S. every year. Many are premedical students and engineers; relatively few have already decided to major in chemistry. At the end of the usual four years of undergraduate education, approximately 11,000 students graduate with a concentration in chemistry or biochemistry; the yield of this “reaction” is approximately 3%. Of these students, somewhat fewer than 2,000 (<20% yield) receive a Ph.D. degree in chemistry or biochemistry after another 5-8 years. Projections ten years into the future suggest that the number of Ph.D. degrees could drop to approximately 1,000 per year, which might not be enough to sustain the needs of industry and academia. The challenge to chemistry education in the U.S. is to increase the undergraduate yield incrementally over the next years while economic, political, and educational forces change in other countries throughout the world. But first, we must ask the question why should undergraduate students, even those devoted and dedicated toward chemistry on the basis of their high school interests, choose to major in this concentration given their experience in the usual lecture-dominated, instructor-focused, and student-as-spectator first-year chemistry course? What message about our favorite discipline is offered by the approach that takes a student's ability to solve numerical problems as the marker for his/her learning of chemistry? Where do the challenges of current research and the thrill of the discovery process appear in today's 1,000-page general chemistry textbook-behemoths and all their ancillary material? How to increase the undergraduate yield from 3% to, say, 4%? Change the pedagogy to incorporate more active learning, involve students in the education process, and create textbooks that emphasize concepts and visualization! Engage the students and they will come to chemistry!