An Interview with Joseph J. Lagowski - ACS Publications - American

Chemistry for Everyone

From Chemical Analysis to Analyzing Chemical Education: An Interview with Joseph J. Lagowski Liberato Cardellini Dipartimento di Idraulica, Strade, Ambiente, e Chimica, Universit a Politecnica della Marche, Ancona 60131 Italy [email protected]

This interview provides glimpses of Joseph J. Lagowski (see Figure 1) and his life from the time he played with a Gilbert chemistry set, to his tenure at The University of Texas at Austin. His initial interest in chemistry was further nurtured and developed thanks to an excellent high school teacher. In the interview, Lagowski discusses his research in nonaqueous solvents and his contribution to chemical education. He shares his views about active learning methods, the use of technology in education, problem solving, and the use of a systemic approach in teaching and learning chemistry. Using the cognitive apprenticeship theory, he discusses the role of the laboratory for improving interest in chemistry. A discussion on graduate programs in chemistry is also included. A Brief Biographical Sketch Joseph J. Lagowski was born in Chicago in 1930. After attending public schools in the western suburbs of that city, he enrolled at the Champaign-Urbana campus of the University of Illinois, from which he was graduated with a Bachelor's degree in 1952. His graduate work was carried out at the University of Michigan where he received an M.S. in 1954, and Michigan State University where he was a Du Pont Fellow, and from which he received a Ph.D. in 1957. His thesis, entitled Acid-Base Equilibria in Liquid Ammonia, was supervised by R. N. Hammer at Michigan State University. After receiving his Ph.D., Lagowski spent the next two years in the Cambridge laboratories of H. J. Emeleus doing research on perfluoroalkyl mercurials, for which work he was awarded another degree of Ph.D. (Cantab.) in 1959. During this time at Cambridge, he was a Marshall Scholar, a member of Sidney Sussex College, an assistant demonstrator at the Lensfield Road Laboratories, and a supervisor in inorganic chemistry for undergraduate tutorials. Lagowski joined the faculty of The University of Texas at Austin in 1959 as an assistant professor; since 1967, he has been professor of chemistry. In the early 1960s, Lagowski became interested in using interactive computing to assist the educational process. He has been able to implement effective uses of computer-based methods of education for first-year level chemistry, both lecture courses for chemistry majors and nonscience majors, as well as a laboratory-oriented course for science majors. Over the years, his broad research interests have included (i) solution phenomena in nonaqueous solvents, with special emphasis on liquid ammonia, and (ii) organometallic chemistry with regard to the effect of the organic moiety on the properties of the metal site. His interest in organometallic species started at Cambridge, where he worked with perfluoroalkyl mercurials and showed that the strong inductive effect of a -CF3 group was 1308

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sufficient to make the mercury atom in (CF3)2Hg a Lewis base acceptor. Early organometallic work involved the chemistry of the borazine ring, which led to the synthesis and characterization of the first “π-complex” of this ring system [(CH3)3N3B3(CH3)3Cr(CO)3]. He and his students embarked on the synthesis and characterization of a series of substituted bis-arene π-complexes of chromium. These π-complexes were also potential precursors of organometallic polymers in which metal atoms occupy discrete positions in the polymer chains. Recently, Lagowski has started studying the synthesis of fullerenes and the coordination chemistry of the fullerenes. In 1964, he published three books: Chemistry (1), Chemistry in the Laboratory (2), and The Structure of Atoms (3). In 1973, he was also appointed professor of education. In 1979, Lagowski became editor of this Journal, and he has written 206 editorials. He relinquished that position in 1996. J. J. Lagowski has published about 200 papers and authored or coauthored 18 books; among them is Introduction to Semimicro Qualitative Analysis, which has reached the 8th edition (4). He is the editor for a series of undergraduate chemistry texts published by Marcel

Figure 1. Photograph of Joseph J. Lagowski. Used with permission.

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Dekker; he is editor of a series of volumes on nonaqueous solution chemistry, published by Academic Press; he is the editor of the Macmillian Encyclopedia of Chemistry (5), and the editorin-chief of Chemistry: Foundations and Applications (6) published in March 2004. His work and scholarship in education have been recognized by many professional honors and awards. In 1981, Lagowski received the National Chemical Manufacturing Association Award for Excellence in Chemistry Teaching. For his service to the chemical education community, Lagowski was given the 1989 American Chemical Society Award in Chemical Education. In 1998, Lagowski was elected and served as chairelect of the Division of Chemical Education (DIVCHED) of the American Chemical Society (ACS), and served as chair of that Division in 1999. In 1999, he was appointed secretary of the Committee on Teaching Chemistry of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) for the period 2000-2001. In 2003, Lagowski received one of two Outstanding Service Awards from the Division of Chemical Education of ACS. Choosing a Career in Chemistry and Education Liberato Cardellini: How did you become a teacher and why did you choose an academic career? First, let's talk a bit about chemistry. I cannot remember a time when my interests were anything but chemistry. As a boy, I was enchanted by the way that ordinary substances could be changed using (what I later learned were called) chemical reactions. It seemed to me that such a multifaceted subject would be worth learning more about. It helped, I think, that my parents, neither of whom got to high school, were sufficiently sensitive to my “chemical interests” to buy me a small Gilbert chemistry set. That event probably occurred after they, especially my mother, had to live through my attempts to isolate the scents of some of the flowers that grew in the backyard of our home. My efforts were dismal failures reflecting my ignorance of the nature of organic substances and simple solubility concepts. All these events occurred while I was in what, today, would be called middle school grades. Like many young people, I was lucky to have an excellent high school physics/chemistry teacher who provided ample opportunities to “do chemical things” in a high school setting, which had not yet been burdened with “politically correct” points of view about “safety”. This is not to imply that we were doing unsafe things. Rather, the teacher, Mr. Olsen, was not burdened with an infrastructure that superimposed rules from the top by persons who probably did not understand safety and hazards from an experimental point of view. My interest in the academic life probably arose from my postsecondary educational experience at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which at that time was the only campus of the UI system. The University of Illinois has an extensive history associated with all aspects of chemistry. One could not but help being affected by an academic chemical ambience that included Roger Adams, Nelson Leonard, Harold Snyder, Carl Marvel, Charles Price, Elias J. Corey, Herb Carter, Therald Moeller, Herbert Laitinen, Howard Malmstadt, Peter Yankwich, L. F. Audieth, and Herb Gutowsky. Looking back upon it, that was a wonderful experience for an undergraduate. I think that environment influenced me to become an academic chemist. Then, when I was a graduate student at Michigan State

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University, I discovered the joy of teaching when I was awarded the DuPont Teaching Fellowship, which made me, in effect, a (very) junior member of that chemistry faculty, where I received much good advice about teaching, especially from the department chair, L. L. Quill, my research supervisor, R. N. Hammer, and R. K. Birdwhistle. You have done research work in nonaqueous solvents, such as ammonia, and organometallic chemistry. What are the main results of your studies? As a young member of the chemistry faculty at The University of Texas, I had an obligation to engage in research; the search for new knowledge in the discipline called “chemistry”; which I took to be focused on “bench chemistry research” and research into the teaching of the subject, namely, chemical education. Research involving bench chemistry was the most logical place to start having completed Ph.D. work at Michigan State and at Cambridge University. My interest in organometallic chemistry started at Cambridge where I was a Marshall Scholar, which required that I pursue a degree program. My supervisor at Cambridge was H. J. Emeleus, who was at the twilight of his work on fully fluorinated organometallic compounds. I chose to work at Cambridge because my Ph.D. work at Michigan State was bereft of experience with synthesis. It was important to me at the time to expand my knowledge of chemistry beyond the ability to do physical measurements, which was the basis of my work at Michigan State. At Cambridge I worked with perfluoroalkyl mercurials and showed that the inductive effect of a ;CF3 group was sufficient to make the mercury atom in (CF3)2Hg a good Lewis acid, which led to the isolation of complexes of the type Hg(CF3)2 3 2KI. The corresponding hydrocarbon mercurial, Hg(CH3)2, does not form Lewis complexes. We were able to estimate the effective electronegativity of the CF3 moiety to be 3.3 on the Pauling scale, using a variety of spectroscopic approaches. Our work with nonaqueous solvents has focused on the influence of the solvent on the chemistry of unusual species. For example, a number of our earlier papers in this area addressed the nature of the solvated electron in amine solvents, especially liquid ammonia. Our interest then shifted to the chemistry of the solvated electron in ammonia; this work led to the characterization of the first bare transition metal anion, Au-. We also characterized Ag- in liquid ammonia. We investigated, both theoretically and experimentally, the conditions under which other metal anions might be stabilized. The most recent work in nonaqueous solution chemistry involved the electrochemical characterization of metal anion clusters, the Zintl ions. Early work in liquid ammonia also was the basis for establishing a quantitative acidity scale in this solvent. While we are on the topic of research, I would be remiss if I did not mention research in chemical education. What about the teaching aspect of your work? Early in my career at Texas I was involved in teaching general chemistry in a large lecture section format (N ≈ 300-500) as well as the coordination of multiple laboratory sections. It became quickly apparent that the current lecture method of instruction was the result of the “slow escalation” of what is a very effective method for a small teacher-to-student ratio. The continuation of the approach to accommodate to the

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interests of a considerably larger cohort of students with a legitimate interest in chemistry had not met with success, in my view. Unfortunately, scaling-up the smaller lecture format to the larger number of students using many fewer (and probably less-experienced) instructional staff;graduate students; produced a significantly less effective learning environment. While occasionally exceptional teachers could be successful in this kind of environment, it was never clear that the corresponding student learning would follow. I think the idea that teaching and learning are two different aspects of education became obvious to me and that, in a large lecture environment, more pressure is placed on the students' capacity to learn than our capacity to provide good teaching. So, even with exceptional teachers, it seemed to me that the proportion of students who did fail courses taught using an expanded version of the classical lecture method was larger than it should be. This realization caused me to turn to the use of digital technology to ease some of the burden on the instructional staff and to increase the effectiveness of student learning. In the early 1960s, we became interested in the use of interactive computing to assist the educational process. In a series of theses and dissertations, my students and I have identified areas of teaching for which computer-based methods are maximally effective, especially for large classes. As a result, we have been able to implement the most effective uses of computer-based methods in education in a number of chemistry courses at the first-year level;lecture courses for both science and nonscience majors as well as laboratory-oriented courses for science majors. Our current activity in this area includes the use of the Internet to deliver a full course of general chemistry instruction. For about 20 years you were the editor of this Journal: from this special point of observation, what is the status of chemical education in the United States? I see two trends that seem to be propagating through the published manuscripts. Digital technology is being used more often in the process of education, both in teaching and in learning. There appears to be more interest in evaluating the effectiveness of using different approaches to “improving” the education process. My instincts tell me that, with the everevolving tools available through digital technology, we should be able to devise more sophisticated methods for evaluating students' efforts at learning than the current machine-graded, multiple-choice instruments. The current versions of multiplechoice examinations are a direct descendent of mark-sense technology, which employed a special pencil incorporating lead with a high graphite content;electrographic pencils; that scored the presence or absence of marks on the basis of conductivity. That technology limited questions to have a single answer. Later, electrographic technology was replaced by optical sensing technology, but the questions were still limited to one answer. Today, sophisticated optical scanning technology allows us, in principle, to capture the entire image of a mark-sense sheet and manipulate it as we need to, yet we are still artificially limited to one answer per question. However, if we break that (now artificial) constraint to allow several possible answers per question, perhaps weighted differently, the true multiple-choice question format could yield a greater insight into a student's response. This strategy involves simply breaking with the timeingrained idea that a multiple-choice question has only one answer and the answers to all such questions are weighted equally. 1310


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Surely, there are other strategies available using other manifestations of digital technology. (See ref 7 for examples incorporating these ideas.) Teaching and Communicating Chemistry In “Chemical Education: Past, Present, and Future” you criticize the teaching of chemistry as “one size fits all” (8). What can you suggest for improving the practice in the class? Well, perhaps that is a bit of an overstatement because most teaching chemists recognize and accommodate to at least one difference, namely, the difference between chemistry for science majors and for nonscience majors. Yet, an inspection of the textbooks that are purported to be for nonscience majors shows these often are simpler (watered-down) versions of the approach taken for science majors. The “one size fits all” idea was probably started in the early 19th century when Stromeyer, among others, started to provide laboratory experiences for students interested in the new science called “chemistry”. We are fortunate to have a description (9) of the laboratory experience of all students in Stromeyer's teaching laboratory that illustrates the point I make here; namely, that the current teaching chemist's instinct is the same as Stromeyer's: “one size fits all”. Perhaps, in those days, that was a sufficient philosophy for students who were interested in chemistry at an applications level. Pharmacy, mineralogy, and medicine were the predominant interests of students who took these laboratoryoriented courses. Indeed, the faculty members who taught chemistry courses in those days were often professors of geology, mineralogy, pharmacy, or medicine. So the applications-oriented interests seem to promote a one-size-fits-all approach to learning the discipline that was to become chemistry. Chemistry was a tool to be mastered, no matter what your interest was as a student. The route to a different approach to nonscience majors' courses is through the observation I made in the paper you quoted (8), that the historical development of chemistry;the subject;shows a symbiotic relationship with society. Chemistry has been perceived to be “useful” to many of the needs for the progress of civilization. Perhaps you recall the DuPont Company's slogan “Better things for better living through chemistry”. The slogan was abandoned when people began to blame pollution problems on the subject of chemistry. Of course, the societal ills attributed to chemistry, the subject, really should have been directed at the company managers. Getting back to the question, I believe it should be possible to construct the story of chemistry and society with only a minimum technical content to give the reader an understanding of the special language of chemistry, which makes it easier to understand. A course for nonscience majors probably should have a minimum laboratory component; those resources are probably better used to create a demonstrationrich lecture experience, where the nuances of “doing chemistry” can be effectively controlled, and the implications of “bench-oriented” results can be incorporated smoothly into the lecture where the big picture can be developed. Part of this question entails the diversity of subject matter for science majors;engineers, premed students, molecular biologists, and so on. Similar problems obtain and a similar approach could be crafted, especially with a strong laboratory component in which students have the start of a research-like experience that helps them understand the way(s) chemistry changes.


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This approach would bring about the demise of the highly structured version of general chemistry that seems to have no intellectually interesting questions about what we don't know or where the facts do not fit the theory. That would be a very high mountain to climb, but it might produce some exciting approaches to our teaching. However, I doubt if these kinds of textbooks would ever be published commercially. You are a proponent of the use of a systemic approach in teaching and learning chemistry. What are the advantages of this approach and how much is it used? Let's put this question in context with a little background information. About 10 years ago, my good friend, Farouk Fahmy (Ain Shams University in Cairo), and I first began the development of the systemic approach to teaching and learning (SATL) chemistry in Austin. Our initial efforts were based on bits of information obtained empirically in various chemistry classes. The SATL technique was originally developed within the context of the worldwide globalization movement in the 1990s of a broad spectrum of human activities, for example, communications, economics, medicine, politics, and banking, in contrast with the usual local or regional manifestations. As we wrote in an early paper on this subject (10): Science education;that process by which progress in science is transmitted to the appropriate cohort of world citizens; must be sufficiently flexible to adapt to an uncertain or, at best, ill-defined global future. That future, however, ultimately must include an appreciation of the vital role that scientists and chemists, in particular, play in human development. Thus, the future of science education must reflect a flexibility to adapt to rapidly changing world needs. It is our thesis that a systemic view of science with regard to principles and their internal (to science) interactions as well as the interactions with human needs will best serve the future world society. Through the use of a systemic approach, we believe it is possible to teach people in all areas of human activity;economic, political, scientific;to practice a more global view of the core science relationships and of the importance of science to such activities. As a start, we suggest the development of an educational process based on the application of “systemics”, which we believe can affect both teaching and learning. The use of systemics can help students begin to understand interrelationships of concepts in a greater context, a point of view, once achieved, that ultimately should prove beneficial to the future citizens of a world that is becoming increasingly globalized. Moreover, if students learn systemics in the context of learning chemistry, we believe they will doubly benefit by learning chemistry and learning to see all subjects in a greater context.

The SATL approach is grounded in constructivist theory and current ideas of how the brain functions. One current description of the human brain is that it has a modular organization consisting of identifiable component processes that participate in the generation of a cognitive state. The five senses;sight, smell, touch, hearing, and taste;are the gateways to the brain where information is deposited in appropriate interconnected networks. Thus, each of us constructs our view of the world using our brain, as it interprets the signals from these five senses coming through the gateways. When the brain receives that information, it is automatically deposited in the appropriate network(s). When an individual recalls information,


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the brain automatically reconstructs it because, in general, the original signals have been deposited in different, yet connected, networks. In other words, we automatically deconstruct and reconstruct the signals our brains receive. This process seems to compliment the constructivist theory of education. SATL techniques have been described in detail and we have shown that students who use them successfully achieve at a higher level than students who do not. See, for example, ref 11. Although most of our work has been in chemistry, SATL methods have been used equally successfully with a wide spectrum of subjects at, essentially, every level of education (11). The cognitive apprenticeship theory (12) is a good theoretical pedagogical construct for the education of graduate students. What about the teaching of undergraduate chemistry? Our paper in this Journal (13) was designed to lay the background for a series of investigations of how to begin to provide a research-centered ambience in an undergraduate chemistry program. We became interested in the cognitive apprenticeship theory (CAT) (12) because it had been used to define the dimensions of situated learning, which seemed to us to be “laboratory work”. The success of CAT in a variety of situated learning ambiences suggested that it could define the dimensions of the environment that is often found in successful graduate-level research laboratories, which was the point of our article (13). The CAT resembles training in traditional crafts, but it has been adapted also toward developing cognitive skills, so it has a chance to help us with laboratory instruction, which is some undefined mixture of skills and cognition. The theory asserts that the research-learning environment has an associated sociology, the consideration of which cannot be ignored in developing appropriate curricula. The CAT incorporates five critical elements impacting the sociology of learning, namely: (i) situatedlearning; (ii) a culture of expert practices; (iii) intrinsic motivation; (iv) exploiting cooperation; and (v) exploiting competition. The lack of time and space here precludes elaborations on these aspects of the sociology of learning; however, these are presented in detail in ref 13 and applied in detail to laboratory instruction in ref 14. The nature of research, not just in chemistry but in any science, is inductive. The outcome of research is not predetermined or known to the individual doing the research. Research involves capitalizing on previous knowledge and skills, however, unlike many of the typical formats of laboratory instruction, research is focused on a narrow problem and explored in depth, rather than a collection of unrelated experiments that have been described by Domin (15) as expository experiments. Laboratory experiences intended to mimic the research experience should not involve a series of disparate experiences, but rather a sequence of experiences as part of a coherent greater whole. Active learning methods are used more and more. Under what conditions is group learning beneficial? The concept of small learning groups gained impetus from the influential publications of Johnson and Johnson (16). The small learning group concept has been elaborated in a number of ways. For example, workshop chemistry, developed and elaborated by Gosser and colleagues, is centered on a peer-led, teamlearning model for teaching and learning chemistry (17).


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This model is said to build upon earlier work that describes team learning, but introduces the use of peer leadership as an integral part of the course structure. A variant of the workshop chemistry model is process-oriented, guided-inquiry learning (POGIL) (18), an NSF-funded project focused on creating a learning environment in which students are actively engaged in mastering a discipline and in developing essential skills by working in self-managed teams on guided inquiry activities. Many possible variables could affect the success of smallgroup learning strategies; many of these share common characteristics. Our experience in Texas involves both small (∼30 students) and large (∼400 students) teaching environments. We have had success in both kinds of courses; however, our most satisfying results have been with the large lecture classes where the challenge is to provide a successful small-group learning environment within the context of a class normally taught in a large lecture format (19). Our view of many aspects of learning, including small learning groups, is that, with the typical large lecture classes that exist in many research-oriented universities, the intervention must be made a required part of the course. Students in these kinds of environments tend not to become engaged in programs on a volunteer basis; they are novice learners and can easily hide in the masses unless the intervention is required and scheduled. It is too easy for students in such an environment to yield to the fluctuating pressures in their lives for what momentarily appear to be valid personal reasons. We believe that facilitation must be available for a successful smallgroup learning experience. We use carefully selected and trained peers to act as facilitators for the small-group learning program as it is expressed in “large lecture class” courses. The facilitators undergo continuous training during the semester in which they engage with the program. See the supporting information for ref 18 for a description of the peer teaching assistant (pTA) program at The University of Texas at Austin. Our data distinctly indicate that students in a large-class environment modified to accommodate to small-group learning achieve at a higher performance level using the conventional academic measures of achievement, examinations, and course grades. Problem solving can be invaluable for learning to reason in a scientific way. What is your teaching philosophy, in particular, in the teaching of problem solving? Problem solving seems, to me, to be one of those processes that are very difficult to analyze, but which we, as scientists, believe is important enough to try to teach our students. Unfortunately, there seems to be no general agreement as to what is involved in this process. To illustrate my point, here are two (of many) suggestions concerning the elements of the problem-solving process. Problem solving is: 1. An individual's capacity to use cognitive processes to confront and resolve real, cross-disciplinary situations in which the solution is not immediately obvious, and where the literacy domains or curricular areas that might be applicable are not within a single domain of mathematics, science, or reading. 2. Thinking about and finding answers for a relatively clearly defined situation for which one or more reasonable answers exist.

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Perhaps the best practical approach to helping students learn to solve problems is to invoke the general process of “learning by doing”. No global view of the problem-solving process has emerged other than the recognition that it is considered as the most complex of intellectual functions, including the usual components of Bloom's taxonomy as well as introspection, behaviorism, modeling, and experimentation. My general approach to teaching problem solving is to create a series of problems, each a bit more complex than the previous one, the increasing complexity being introduced by changing the details of the chemical system and withholding more and more useful information given in the context of the problem. Students have to be “weaned” from the idea that “problems come neatly packaged with all the necessary information contained therein”. Let me illustrate the process in a laboratory setting specifically focused on the general ideas associated with qualitative analysis. I know that qualitative analysis is not very popular with many teaching chemists today, but I like the subject because it allows students to learn about descriptive chemistry in an interesting way. That is, students can be trained to do simple manipulation techniques in the laboratory; measuring, mixing, observing, estimating;in the context of a simple unknown. For example, given access to the substances hydrochloric acid, aqueous solutions of sodium carbonate, silver nitrate, and sodium hydroxide, all in unmarked containers, place the appropriate correct labels on the containers. You may recognize this “qual problem” as a version of the 10-solution experiment (20). This problem-oriented situation can be made simpler by providing a label for one of the substances and it can be made more complex by increasing the number of substances. It can be made even more complex by introducing an aqueous solution of a substance not commonly discussed in beginning chemistry courses such as a thorium salt. The interesting thing, to my mind, is that we can start with a laboratory-oriented problem and slip into a “word problem” in which students may have to find important information, for example, the reaction of thorium ions with aqueous sodium carbonate or sodium hydroxide. Such information can be obtained from the literature or from having access to a laboratory incorporating the appropriate equipment or chemicals. I have used similar approaches to lecture-oriented materials such as establishing the molecular formula of a compound, given some information on the composition and molecular weight data. From these kinds of successes, I postulate that the hardest problem a novice can be faced with involves a very simple question, bereft of data; this forces the student to (i) formulate the problem, and (ii) search for the necessary data. Subjects normally discussed in general chemistry courses can be stated more directly without incorporating the relevant data. For example: “What mass of ytterbium oxide is required to prepare 2 mL of a solution containing 1.34 mg of ytterbium ion?” Ytterbium chemistry is not usually discussed in general chemistry courses, so the student has to “find” the most common oxidation state of this element, produce a formula for its oxide, and write an equation that describes the solution of the oxide. In other words, a student in general chemistry is probably able to do a similar problem algorithmically with standard common compounds, but he or she is generally not capable of “finding the relevant information” necessary to solve the problem using the concepts typically taught.


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Viewpoints and Recommendations for Improving Education in Chemistry In the 1990s, many hoped that technology would help improve education (21). Where has technology made a difference? In chemistry instruction, it appears that the greatest impact of the use of computer-based activities is on seemingly rather mundane teaching-related activities, namely, the distribution, collection, grading, and recordkeeping of the traditional elements of instruction: homework, quizzes, examinations. These are the elements of instruction that can help teachers to engage their students with the subject by providing systematic, regular opportunities to show what the students know about the details of the subject. The tedium of using these demonstrably successful conventional elements of instruction often diverts teachers who have high teaching loads from using them to their fullest advantage. A number of commercial software packages are available to perform these tasks, and a number of locally produced packages have been reported to accomplish the tasks. Thus, the increasing numbers of students who are not chemistry majors, but who have a legitimate interest in the subject, have a better learning experience than those who do not have such access to such techniques. With such access, quizzes and examinations become learning experiences as well as the traditional homework sets. With the ability to link questions through the concepts contained therein, and the ability to manipulate student answers (for example to provide partial credit), a computer-based questioning ambience provides a much richer learning experience than is available through conventional multiple-choice questions. Although we have shown in our work that such an environment can be attained, it does not appear that these possibilities have been fully accepted. Computer-based methods permeate chemistry laboratory instruction with respect to monitoring complex experiments to assist with fairly complex data analysis. Simulations can be used to either anticipate or expand a conventional bench experiment. For example, a reasonably complex kinetics experiment can be done at the bench (room temperature) and, then, extended to other student-selected temperatures to provide information on activation energies. The details of using a spectrophotometer can be learned in a simulation mode prior to undertaking an experiment requiring the student to actually use the real instrument. So, to directly answer the question, I believe that computing has, or at least, can have, a positive impact on the teaching of chemistry. An interesting question is: How can that assertion be verified? My scientific training instinctively prompts me to ask: “Where are the data to support that conclusion? What are the relevant data?” One answer is student achievement, which is relatively easy to measure, but what of the other possible affective elements? What are the relationships between the accepted standards of achievement and success in chemistry, or another subject? We still have lots to explore, investigate, and learn. The laboratory can be a tool for improving the learning and the interest toward chemistry. What are your suggestions for an entry-level laboratory course? My response to this question rests on two premises. First, that the CAT (12, 13) can guide us to the creation of a formal undergraduate laboratory course. Secondly, that a knowledge of


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the research experience is an important aspect of the development of chemical concepts that we should teach students starting at the undergraduate level. A growing interest in “things chemical” has produced an increasing number of “nearly chemistry majors”, that is, students who are sufficiently serious about studying chemistry that they take three or four chemistry courses in their studies. Clearly, the obligation of teaching future chemists extends to include such students. All serious chemistry students need to understand how chemistry progresses, as well as learning what we know. We have an obligation to give these students a sense of how we know what we know. In effect, we need to begin the process of learning about doing research as early in their careers as is feasible. That doing research is an important component in the education of chemistry students is not a new or debatable concept, as we have developed previously (7). Indeed, some faculty relying on their intuition and using their own initiative have organized available resources to mentor undergraduate students in their own laboratories. The important question, in our view, is when and how to engage the novice chemistry student with this concept. The operational template for this course was derived from the CAT (13). Briefly, the CAT resembles traditional craft apprenticeships in that it involves the details of the interaction of an expert and a student. The student is guided through a series of exercises with the expectation that the student will assimilate the skill set the expert possesses. The skill set in the CAT involves cognitive skills as well as the physical and manipulative skills found in the traditional apprenticeship model. The goal of such experiences is to mimic the research ambience, in that students are asked to: (i) recognize and formulate a scientific question; (ii) devise an approach that should give an answer to that question; and (iii) manipulate the chemistry concepts and use the available equipment to carry out the experiment in a manner that should give an unambiguous answer to the question. Within each step of this process, some basic understanding about the discipline must be known to the student; it is unrealistic to assume that the novice student, especially at the entry-level, could perform each of these steps without a great deal of coaching. Indeed, the Achilles' heel of most inquiry-based instruction is that it assumes that students are innately capable of solving scientific problems on their own. Although students may be capable of formulating scientific questions, their knowledge of the nature of the techniques and approaches that are capable of answering those questions is likely to be lacking. For students to learn how to approach scientific questions, they need to have a roadmap, a context in which the question is posed. As practitioners of any trade must envision the final product as a whole so that they can see where their work will lead, novice chemistry students must recognize and be able to accomplish the individual tasks that have to be performed in order to obtain the finished product. An important part of the laboratory experience is to provide students with the opportunity to collect data rapidly and on demand. Accordingly, among the tools we make available to our entry-level students is the ability to do fast titrations and obtain UV-vis spectra rapidly. Thus, students can check their own work before passing on to the next piece of the puzzle. “Correctness” in our scheme springs from being able to reproduce a result, rather than checking with an instructor to see whether a necessary preordained result is acceptable. We stress reproducibility of the results.


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The laboratory portion of the course consisted of 12 laboratory exercises based on the overarching theme and that required students to obtain the concentrations of specific substances in common complex biological systems (14). What is the role of the history of chemistry in the teaching of general chemistry? I believe that incorporating historical information in materials designed to teach chemistry is useful for an understanding that chemistry, as we know it, is the cumulative product of human activity. I prefer to develop the key chemical concepts from the evidence that was available at the time these ideas were first recognized. Frequently, the first expression of what will become a principle is not fully developed, but it changes, often significantly, with time. Such sequences often illustrate quite clearly the nature of the human interactions that have shaped principles. Take, for example, the Bohr theory of the electronic structure of atoms. I realize that the Bohr model, based on the movement of electrons as particles, has been superseded by the quantum mechanical model, but the Bohr model does represent nicely the heart of my argument. The Bohr model is usually presented as a complete package, either with only circular orbits, or circular and elliptical orbits. It is presented as an assertion, usually with little relationship to experimental data. If I were to teach the Bohr model, my approach would be to start with the simplest experimental observations that emission spectra of the elements are line spectra rather than continuous spectra; the latter is probably familiar to the average student. This would connect Bohr's quantum conditions to circular orbits, yielding the principle quantum number n. Next I would try to account for the observation that certain lines are broad, which, upon closer inspection, were shown to be multiple lines close together. This would allow the introduction of elliptical orbits, according to Sommerfield, which would introduce the secondary quantum number, l. And, finally, I would connect the splitting of certain lines in the hydrogen spectrum by a magnetic field to the magnetic quantum number ml. In my experience, this approach cements the relationship of experimental data to theory. While it is true that the particulate nature of an electron is the “theory” involved here, this approach, which stresses the classical motion of an electron particle, allows for the introduction of wave mechanics and helps focus students' attention on the wave nature of moving small particles. Both ideas, the Bohr model and the wave mechanical model, should leave the student with an idea that the “location” of electrons in an atom is a critical concept (which will become important when we discuss molecular structures). Another short example to make my point occurs in the discussion of Avogadro's hypothesis, which, as you may know, was made at the first great international chemical congress in Karlsruhe in 1860. Avogadro's hypothesis was all but ignored because only a few chemists were concerned with the particulate nature of the subject. It was Avogadro who made sense of GayLussac's Law of Combining Volumes by concentrating on the particulate nature of a gas and that led to the diatomicity of the elemental gases (except the rare gases that were unknown at the time). In a brilliant application of Avogadro's hypothesis, Cannizzaro (who we revere today for his work in organic chemistry) showed the way to use experimental data on chemical composition and the density of pure gaseous substances to determine the molecular formulas of substances. Indeed, the 1314


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Cannizzaro method could be used also to establish the relative atomic masses of elements that did not form volatile compounds. All this before the invention of the mole concept! These kinds of uses of historical information not only show the human aspect of our discipline, they also provide some insight into the way(s) that chemical principles develop as humans discover new information about chemical phenomena. Seldom does a core chemical idea see daylight completely formed. The initial manifestation often triggers hypotheses that challenge the concept, which leads to better data that can be used to refine the original version of the idea. The historical dimension often forces a discussion of how we know what we know, which, in my view, is more interesting than starting with an assertion of what we know. In the evaluation of chemical thought, how we know is very often more important than what we know. How we know is a process, whereas what we know is often a fact and can be obtained from a handbook or an encyclopedia. That is not to say that encyclopedias are not important, but they do not form the basis for teaching and learning chemistry. Why can chemistry still be considered the “central science”? The “central science” label for our discipline was popularized in the 1970s (22). Ted Brown's excellent general chemistry textbook, Chemistry, the Central Science, was published in 1977 and ACS sponsored a workshop with that title in 1978 at the 175th national meeting. The label alludes to the historical fact that chemistry and society have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship since early times;when chemistry was still an “art”. Society has recognized for a long time that the science we now call chemistry has been the source of much learning that has provided numerous applications that have helped society evolve and develop in areas such as energy, and the production of materials with all sorts of useful characteristics such as dyes, pigments, and pharmaceuticals. Currently, a very large effort is focused on the applications of chemistry, in contrast to efforts to move the core ideas forward. So, from this point of view, I believe that chemistry will remain the central science because a large number of chemists also continue their interest;experimental and theoretical; in core chemical concepts. The expression of the appropriate core chemical concepts in other disciplines will also continue. When a discipline recognizes that its basic interest involves molecules, great progress often follows. Consider biology in the 1950s before and after the recognition that genetics was clearly related to the structure of DNA, a molecule. It is safe to say that the nature of studies in many areas of biology took on a molecular aspect after that realization. Chemistry will continue to be the central science in the sense that applications of chemical ideas will continue to benefit society. Indeed, in my opinion, much of the chemical research being published today is of the “applications” kind. I fully realize that this is an assertion and a value judgment, but, in my lifetime, I believe that the pendulum has swung from a preponderance of papers that attempted to move the discipline forward to a preponderance of papers concerned with applications of the chemistry. An anecdotal review of the work now being published seems to suggest that young chemists receive a large portion of support for their research through agencies that stress applications. You should not take this personal observation to reflect a bias against applications chemistry. Rather, I lament the loss of research designed to move the subject forward. This movement


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from basic chemistry, if I might use that phrase, to applications chemistry is the result of several strong forces acting on the discipline. We can trace one of the roots of this attitude to Senator William Proxmire (Democrat, Wisconsin, 1915-2005) who was an outspoken critic of federal government waste. He created the Golden Fleece Awards, the first of which was given to the National Science Foundation in 1975, for funding an $84,000 study on why people fall in love. More or less, since that time, federal funding agencies began to expect statements from scientists who proposed basic research that indicated the “value” of a proposed project to society. It is very difficult to decide how long a particular scientific observation will be considered a “useful” application, where the term “useful,” like truth and beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. For example, the importance of lasers in our society is obvious today. The principle of the laser was first known in 1917 when Albert Einstein described the theory of stimulated emission radiation. However, it was not until the late 1940s that engineers began to use this principle for practical purposes. At the onset of the 1950s, several different engineering groups were working toward harnessing microwave energy using the principle of stimulated emission. The MASER (microwave amplification by stimulated emission radiation) was invented in 1954 and it formed the basis of microwave communication systems. The first optical laser based on electromagnetic radiation in the visible region using ruby as the medium was invented in 1960. It took nearly 50 years for the discovery of the phenomenon of stimulated emission of radiation to yield “useful” applications of that discovery. This very brief history illustrates the difficulty in predicting the ultimate “usefulness” of any scientific discovery. We do know, however, that, ultimately, most “scientific research” is translated into a useful application. It is the timeline from discovery to application that is unpredictable. We also know that if the stream of “pure scientific research” slackens, applications in the future will also do so. Another factor that intrudes on efforts to do basic research is the demise of the great research and development (R&D) laboratories that used to be associated with chemical industries. That occurred when purely business-oriented leaders took control of these industries. In general, many R&D facilities were terminated because it was not possible to place an “accounting value” on the outputs of such laboratories unless one had faith that basic research would, ultimately, become an important part of a company's future. That was a difficult objective to achieve on a quarterly basis, which is the usual accounting timeline. Accordingly, most chemical (petroleum) companies dropped their research laboratories. When they realized that they still needed access to research, whether basic or developmental, those companies sought it at universities through the device of joint projects. In effect, the companies outsourced their R&D needs to universities who were willing participants because of the overhead they gained and the possibilities of controlling potentially useful intellectual assets such as patents. The ACS Committee on Professional Training reported (23): “The exploitation of graduate students in the U. S. is a disgrace. As a reward, after working for five or six years to earn a Ph.D., they are told they are not qualified for work unless they do a postdoc.” If changes are needed, what would you suggest? In general, graduate programs in chemistry are quite poorly defined from my perspective. They appear to be some mixture of


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a training program and an educational experience; the proportions of each process are dependent on the character of the faculty involved and the interests of the students. A dictionary definition of the verb train includes the meaning of giving someone instruction and practice of a discipline intending to impart proficiency or efficiency in that discipline. In contrast, dictionaries define the verb educate with the central meaning of developing someone's mental faculties and powers through teaching, instruction, or schooling. From these points of view, training and education are, basically, two different processes, although they may share similar characteristics. Unfortunately, both processes are important for some institutions such as research universities. To try to do both leads to a condition where graduate students or, indeed, the graduate faculty involved, could send or receive mixed signals. Most students at all levels need financial support for the time they spend in educational institutions. Students have to focus on the message(s) being sent by the institution and their corresponding responses. Mixed signals can occur both ways. A large number of institutions of higher learning are overburdened with students at every level. And, graduate students (in chemistry, for example) can obtain support by helping to teach or do research, that is, to help a professor attain some desirable result that was (is) probably unknown at the time it was proposed to the sponsor. That ambience is conducive to the abuse defined as “exploitation”. The needs of the graduate student (a “decent” salary) and the needs of the professor and university (good data, good teaching) come to focus at one point. With respect to possible employees, the university generally needs more hands than are available for teaching and research. Into this mix we add the question of “What are the goals of the graduate student?” Does that student plan to become a teacher, a researcher, or a combination of both? Often, those goals, especially for novice students, are not really clear, and they understandably want to keep all options open. Finally, what are potential employers interested in? All the players in this mix probably would agree that the emerging graduate student should be “interdisciplinary”, a word that has achieved recent popularity in describing graduate programs. Interdisciplinary usually means two or more classically defined areas of specialization such as two or more subdisciplines of chemistry, or chemistry plus an engineering or biological discipline. I take “interdisciplinary” also to include serious work in teaching the subject. An interdisciplinary goal is just going to take more time; hence, the need for additional education and training, a postdoctoral experience or “another degree”, to satisfy the student's needs, which may be more focused when exiting a program of study than when the student first entered the graduate program. Now, turning to your question, I'm uncertain whether its focus is on the exploitation of graduate students, or the need for more training and education to become interdisciplinary. It's difficult to see how to ameliorate exploitation, other than to define and provide for a “living wage”, a position that is historically difficult to overcome. Pay graduate students more and figure out where and how to get the extra resources. Universities usually can, rather easily, fund one or the other of these needs to support teaching or research, but not often both; teaching resources are probably more dependable, even if they are not what we think they should be, than research resources. Whatever the situation, this is getting to be a very difficult “sell”, even before the recent financial problems hit, because the


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educational process seems to most people to be a “bottomless pit” that consumes as many resources as you can give it and always wants (or needs) more. If your question has to do with the apparent need for a postdoctoral experience, the solution seems to reside in the way we can teach “good chemical education practices” within the context of the graduate program, which is a curricular issue for graduate programs. Literature Cited 1. Watt, G. W.; Hatch, L. F.; Lagowski, J. J. Chemistry; Norton: New York, 1964. 2. Watt, G. W.; Hatch, L. F.; Lagowski, J. J. Chemistry in the Laboratory; Norton: New York, 1964. 3. Lagowski, J. J. The Structure of Atoms; Houghton-Mifflin: Boston, MA, 1964. 4. Lagowski, J. J.; Sorum, C. H. Introduction to Semimicro Qualitative Analysis, 8th ed.; Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 2005. 5. Macmillan Encyclopedia of Chemistry; Lagowski, J. J., Ed.; Macmillan: New York, 1997. 6. Chemistry: Foundations and Applications; Lagowski, J. J., Ed.; Thomson-Gale: Farmington Hills, MI, 2004. 7. Hinckley, C. C.; Lagowski, J. J. J. Chem. Educ. 1966, 43, 575– 578. 8. Lagowski, J. J. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 425–436. 9. Lockermann, G.; Oesper, R. E. J. Chem. Educ. 1953, 30, 202. 10. Fahmy, A. F. M.; Lagowski, J. J. J. Chem. Educ. 2003, 80, 1078–1083. 11. Web Page of the Systemic Approach to Teaching and Learning. http://www.satlcentral.com/ (accessed Aug 2010).

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12. Collins, A.; Brown, J. S.; Newman, S. Cognitive Apprenticeship: Teaching the Craft of Reading, Writing, and Mathematics. In Knowing, Learning and Instruction: Essays in Honor of Robert Glaser; Resnick, L. B., Ed.; Erlbaum: Hillsdale, NJ, 1989. 13. Stewart, K. K.; Lagowski, J. J. J. Chem. Educ. 2003, 80, 1362–1366. 14. Elliott, M. J.; Stewart, K. K.; Lagowski, J. J. J. Chem. Educ., submitted for publication. 15. Domin, D. S. J. Chem. Educ. 1999, 76, 543–547. 16. (a) Johnson, D. W.; Johnson, R. T. Educational Leadership 1989, 47, 29. (b) Theory Into Practice 1999, 38, 67. 17. (a) Gosser, D. K.; Roth, V. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 185. (b) Gosser, D. K.; Roth, V.; Gafney, L.; Kampmeier, J.; Strozak, V; VarmaNelson, P.; Weiner, M. Chem. Educator 1996, 1, 102. (c) Woodward, A.; Weiner, M.; Gosser, D. K. J. Chem. Educ. 1993, 70, 651. 18. Web Page of the Process-Oriented, Guided-Inquiry Learning Project. http://www.pogil.org/ (accessed Aug 2010). 19. Lyon, D. C.; Lagowski, J. J. J. Chem. Educ. 2008, 85, 1571–1576. 20. Otto, C. J. Chem. Educ. 1926, 3, 1071. 21. Lagowski, J. J. J. Chem. Educ. 1995, 73, 383. 22. (a) Brown, T. L.; Lemay, H. E. In Chemistry, the Central Science; Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1977. (b) Chemical Explanation: Characteristics, Development, Autonomy; Earley, J. E., Sr., Ed.; Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 2003, 988, xi. (c) Good, M. L. Pure Appl. Chem. 2001, 73, 1229. (d) Heyllin, M. Chem. Eng. News 1998, 76 ( Jan 12), 123. (e) The Central Science; Kauffman, G. B., Szmant, H. H., Eds.; Texas Christian University Press: Forth Worth, TX, 1984. 23. Graduate Education in Chemistry: The ACS Committee on Professional Training Surveys of Programs and Participants; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2002; p 16.


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An Interview with Joseph J. Lagowski - ACS Publications - American

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