D. D. Davis University of Maryland College Pork, 20742
An Operational Graduate Program in Environmental Chemistry
The other speakers of this session (see preceding three papers) have discussed the needs for training of chemists for work in the environment and the oros and cons of various approaches. I will discuss the program we have established within the Chemistry Department a t Maryland and some of the reasoning hehind it. Faculty members within the several divisions of our department have been involved individually in research and teaching in environmental chemistry for several years. However, we felt that our efforts could be utilized more efficiently and the graduate students would have available a more coherent program if we established a departmentwide program in this emerging field of chemistry. Below I describe our Environmental Chemistry program that now involves nine faculty members, five research associates, and about 20 graduate students. Philosophy and Structure of the Program
We felt i t was of utmost importance that students of the -nrnmam - - - - ~ ~retain not onlv their identities as chemists. but more specificallyitheir identification with established sub-discidines of chemistrv. Since environmental chemistry is far from being established as a recognizable sub-discipline, we felt it would he a disservice to students if we graduated them solely under the title "environmental chemist." Prospective employers know fairly well the types of experience that a n analytical chemist or a physical chemist, for example, will have had in school, but what. is an environmental chemist's area of exoertise? Thus, we felt that our program must require that &dents meet the usual criteria for one of the established sub-disciplines of chemistry. However, students do not become environmental chemists simply by doing research on a problem related to the environment-they need a broader view of the environment and the important chemical aspects of it. T o gain detailed knowledge of all fields relating to environmental studies, a PhD student would have to remain in school for about six vears or so. Since that is not pmrtical, some compromises must be made. Taking these considerations into account, we h a w devised the following program that gives the students a considerable breadth of env~ronmentalundersranding, while retainine their identities as exDerts in a su1)-disciolinr of chemistry 1) Students entering the environmental program are advised by
faculty memhen within the program. 2) During their first year, they take the two-semester environ-
mental chemistry sequence described below, along with other courses in their probable sub-discipline and in the "sphere" of the environment in which they are most interested, i.e., atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, or lithosphere. The latter courses may he within the department (e.g., geaehernistry, marine geochemistry, biochemistry) or in other departments, e.g., meteorology, geology, hatany, water quality chemistry (in Civil Engineering). 3) During the latter part of their first year, they are expected to choose a research advisor, usually from among faculty members of the program. From that time on, the student is advised Presented at the session on "Environmental Education for the Professional Chemist," Eastern Analytical Symposium, New Yark City, Nov. 14, 1978.
by the division to which the research supervisor belongs and is expected to meet the criteria (required courses, examinations, etc.) established for all students within that division. For example, if the supervisor is a physical chemist, the student would take the usual courses in quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, ete. that physical chemistry students take and the candidacy exams offered in physical chemistry. He or she would also take any additional environmentally related courses deemed necessary by the research supervisor. 4) After the student enters a division, contact with the environmental program is maintained by having two faculty members of the program on his or her examination and thesis committees. Students are also expected to attend environmental chemistry seminars throughout this as well as the earlier phase of study. Students will emerge from this program with the usual high competence in an area of chemistry plus the added dimension of a n understanding of some imoortant chemical aspects of the environment One rarely gets something for nothine and that is true here to some extent. The nrice one pays ys possibly additional time required in graduate school. The added course work required may slow some students down by as much as two semesters, but we anticipate about one semester for the average student of the program. The amount of delay for each student depends on the sub-discipline he enters, as the requirements differ markedlv from one division to another. For some divisions, notably geochemistry and nuclear/atmospheric chemistrv. the environmentallv related courses are in several cases also required by the division, so little time is lost, but the overlap is much less for some other divisions. We feel that in the long run, the additional one or two semesters of time are a reasonable price to pay for the broader experience obtained. Courses in Environmental Chemistry
As noted above, the core of our environmental chemistry instruction is a two-semester sequence. Since few chemistry students a t any level have had prior experience in environmental chemistry and, as many undergraduate majors in chemistry and other sciences and engineering are interested in the subject, we decided to make the first course open to both undergraduates and graduate students. In order to be able to discuss certain physical chemical aspects of the environment, we require students to have had or to be taking chemical thermodynamics or its equivalent in physics or engineering. This first course is a broad survey course designed to give students perspective on the involvement of chemistry in air and water oollution. oroblems of the nroduction and use of enerm. the recovery and recycling i f resources, and biological iffects of substances mobilized by man's activities. The first course is hroadly divided into spheres, i.e., atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere, with the biosphere being touched upon throughout the term. In covering each sphere, we first establish some of the properties and behavior of the natural sphere before discussing perturbations caused by man. In doing so, we must briefly draw upon material from other disciplines, e.g., meteorology for the atmosphere, as most students will have had little, if any, background in those areas. For chemists, probably one of the most important outside areas drawn Volume 51, Number 12, December 1974
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unon is that of biolom. the field of ecologv. In -.. s~ecificallv . order to understand biological effects of toxic substiices, it is essential that students acquire some knowledge of the flow of energy and nutrients through food chains, the residence times of chemical species in various segments of the environment. the rapid evolution of species attacked by chemical poisons, a i d the concepts of decomposition and biodemadahilitv. In view of the many. topics treated, none can bk treated-in great depth. However, the main objective of this course is that of giving students perspective, i.e., showing them the role of chemistry within the broad area of environmental study. When we initiated the course in 1970, there were no adequate text materials. Today there is still no single text, hut we have found a set of three (two of which are paperbacks) that cover most of the material quite adequately: W. D. Russell-Hunter, "Aquatic Productivity'' (MacmilIan, 1970); S. J. Williamson, "Fundamentals of Air Pollution" (Addison-Wesley, 1973); and C. L. Hamilton, "Chemistw of the Environment'' (Freeman. 1973). an excellent vofume of reprints from .Scientific ~ m e r & n . We trv to limit the enrollment to 35 students and it has usuaily run between 30 and 40. About two-thirds are chemistry majors (about equally divided between graduates and undergraduates) and the remaining one-third are from other departments, especially chemical engineering and science education. The second course is limited to graduate students as we wished to cover some chemical aspects with considerable sophistication. Our objective in this course is quite different from that of the first course. Instead of covering much of the same material simply with added sophisticat~on,we felt it more important t o cover a limited number of chemdetail right up to the level of current reical problems search. Since environmental chemistry is such a broad field, no person can be expert in all areas of it. Only with much preparation can one lecturer cover most of the material a t the level of the survey course. Clearly, it would be impossible for one person to cover the several areas of the graduate-level course. Therefore, we have set i t up under a coordinator who draws upon about five other faculty members in the department for presentations of several-week blocks of the course and occasional single lectures by other persons inside or outside of the department. The coordinator does the scheduling, oversees pmhlem sets and examinations, and gives some of the lec-
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tures, especially where needed to bridge gaps between the other lecturers. The course emphasizes those areas of environmental chemistry that are being pursued in research here. This is entirely appropriate, as we should obtain the highest quality of lectures when the speakers are discussing areas in which they are a t the research frontier. Furthermore, most of the students will be engaging in research in one of the areas covered shortly after taking the course. The content of the course will probably be changed considerably each year. Since there is quite a wide selection of topics to be covered, it may be possible to build a sequence of courses at this level so that students would take the course for credit the first year and audit i t in subsequent years to obtain coverage of the entire spectrum of topics covered. In our first offering of the course, topics were arranged around the theme of "Trace Substances in the Environment." The topics covered were 1) Chemistry of the natural stratosphere: composition, reaction rates, chemical modelling; man-made perturbations, especially the SST and the space shuttle. 2) Chemistry of the troposphere: gas-phase reactions: formation behavior and depositian of aerosols, effects of manmade sources, especially power plants, incinerators and vehicles; photochemical smog formation;airborne toxic elements. 3) Chemistry of inland waters: mobility of trace substances in soil and ground water, important equilibria in water, transport and deposition of toxic species, hialagical uptake of trace suhstances, applications to eastern U S . waters, especially Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. In the course of covering the topics noted above, the lecturers devote some time to the exnerimental methods used in studies of those areas, especially those involved in field measurements and sample collections, with which chemistry students are rarely iamiliar. We do not expect fully to prepare students to be ahle to do experimental research in each area, but a t a minimum, to he ahle to recognize the limitations and pitfalls of the various methods in their reading and evaluation of research. We agree that a graduate-level laboratory course in environmental chemistry would be highly desirable, hut as yet we do not have the resources needed to develop such a course. If outside support could be found, a full-time, several-week course, with heavy emphasis on field studies, during the summer following the student's first year of graduate school would he highly beneficial.
