A DISCUSSION of the PROPOSAL for COOPERATIVE JUNIOR RESEARCH* W. P. CORTELYOUt University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa AND
E. HARTGE CORTELYOU William Penn College, Oskaloosa, Iowa
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WR presence in this meeting is a proof that the American Chemical Soaety realizes that its continued existence is dependent upon the facility with which i t can reproduce its kind. As educators it is our duty to recruit students for the chemical profession and i t is also our duty to teach them to look forward to making a real contribution to the advancement of the science, if not in the realm of pure research, a t least by doing what they do just a little better than i t was done before. Of course, the honorary and professional fraternities, in those institutions lucky enough to have them, make a valuable contribution to this problem, but their rewards often come too late to persuade a student to choose chemistry as his career and few of them are designed particularly to encourage research, the life blood of our profession, as of all others. Presented before the Division of Chemical Education at the ninety-thud meeting of the A. C. S., Chapel Hill, N. C., April 14, .--1YSi.
+ Present ad&ess: Georgia.
Tuhize chatillan
Rome,
Ordinary undergraduate courses as they are typically organized offer little chance for the student to become research-minded, and too often we have lost our keenest students to mathematics, physics, biology, and other allied sciences before they get as far as asenior or graduate research problem. Furthermore, the typical senior research problem is too often of entirely local interest. As individuals most of us are powerless to do anything about this, especially in the smaller schools where we are overburdened with classes, and funds available for research are necessarily limited. Those of us who do try to assign research problems to our better undergraduate students find our way beset with difficulties. Too often we have failed to realize that students should not be expected to go directly from no experience whatever with independent work to a fairly complex problem. For want of better terms to distinmish between two kinds of original investigation we s
