AN UNDERGRADUATE SEMINAR* JOHN R. SAMPEY, HOWARD COLLEGE. BIRMINGWM, ALABAMA
At Howard College, for a number of years, seniors have been required to write theses for the bachelor's degree, and the seminar described i n the present @perwas instituted for the primary purpose of assisting the student i n his thesis work. While research reports receive the major emphasis i n the seminar throughout the session, two other types of reports haw been worked in. The first of these i s designed to strengthen and unify the four-year work i n the department. The second type aims to help the student who desires graduate training.
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Theses and seminars are forms of mental discipline usually reserved for graduate students. In some institutions, however, seniors are required to write theses for the bachelor's degree. Such has been the situation a t Howard College for a number of years, and i t is the opinion of the administration that the thesis gives to the arts college a distinct place in the educational system of the country, for on the one hand it differentiates the curriculum of the college from that of the high school, and on the other hand it serves to introduce the student to research, the method of thought in the university. The question of giving this training to those who do not plan to enter a graduate school is one upon which something may be said on both sides. A problem open even more to discussion is the advisability of permitting the future graduate student to obtain his first contact with research from instructors whose major interests are not in productive scholarship. The problem of the undergraduate thesis is beyond the scope of the present paper. We shall limit our discussion to a description of a seminar which was instituted in the department of chemistry three years ago with the primary purpose of assisting the student in his thesis work. The seminar meets one hour a week throughout the year. Attendance is required from all seniors majoring in the department. Five semester hours credit is given for the thesis and seminar. During the opening meetings members of the s t d present phases of their own research work. These reports are drawn up in sufficient detail to give the student an intimate picture of the real nature of research. Especial attention is called to such general problems as how to search the literature, how to make and file notes upon significant articles, how to keep an accurate laboratory record, and how to attack the numerous specific problems which arise in any type of research. As soon as the students begin laboratory research on their problems the first part of each seminar is taken up with brief individual reports upon the progress made. These reports carry advantages to the individual
* Presented before the Division of Chemical Education at the 80th meeting of the American Chemical Society, Cincinnati, Ohio, Sept. 8-12, 1930. 520
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and to the group. The individual profits not only from the regular checkup on his own work, but he has the opportunity to obtain suggestions from others toward the solution of some specific difficulty. The group benefits from the association with other problems, their difficulties, and how they are solved. At some seminar sessions the whole hour is spent in the discussion of the previous week's work. While research reports receive the major emphasis throughout the year, we have been able, because of the limited number majoring in the department, to work in two other types of reports. The first of these is designed to strengthen and unify the four years work in the department. The second type aims to help the student who desires graduate training. There is little need for putting forth an extra effort in a seminar to strengthen and unify the four-year course in the case of the superior student. This has been made apparent from oral examinations given to such students during the past four years a t Howard College. These examinations have been held in connection with an honors course. The students whose grades were sufficiently high to enable them to qualify for the honors course have, with one or two exceptions, passed most creditable oral examinations of an hour's duration. Although the superior student may show a comprehensive grasp of the subject matter of six to ten full-year courses in his major department, the situation is quite different with the average student. The meager store of knowledge retained by the latter a year or two after the completion of a course is often pitiful. This condition may be corrected in some measure by a review through seminar reports of the more important topics studied during the four years. One of the most effective methods of conducting this review is to request each student to prepare a list of the names of twenty-five or thirty men who have made significant contributions to the larger fields of chemistry. A list from the field of atomic structure, for example, might well include the names of Rutherford, J. J. Thomson, Aston, Fajans, Soddy, Crookes, Rontgen, Becquerel, Curie, Bragg, Guye, Zeeman, C. T. R. Wilson, Bohr, G. N. Lewis, Moseley, Kossel, Langmuir, Sommerfeld, Schrodinger, and de Broglie. Lists of nearly equal length may be prepared for such other divisions of physical chemistry as solutions. colloids, catalysis, and electrochemistry. With a little preparation the fields of general inorganic, analytical, organic, and industrial chemistry may be worked even more intensively. The actual method of conducting the review may vary from a formal report by a single student to an oral quiz session participated in by all. Interest in the latter may be heightened by having the staff members take their turn a t identifying names submitted by the students. The tendency of such a contest, however, is to run toward the more obscure contributions, whereas the most profit will be derived from the consideration of the more fundamental discoveries.
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A more rigorous method of testing the ability of the student to handle fundamental theoretical principles is through the solution of typical calculations selected from the several fields of study. The student who has given little evidence of enthusiasm for mathematical treatment in the regular course work may become interested in this general survey. Problems which he understood only imperfectly in a certain course he finds have been cleared up by knowledge gleaned from some other course pursued later. The student gains confidence with this increase in his ability to handle the ordinary mathematical operations of undergraduate chemistry. The last type of seminar report we shall consider does not come last chronologically, for the student who desires to enter upon graduate study should give thought to the selection of a university before the middle of the senior year. This is of particular importance in the event the student has maintained his scholarship on a level from which he may reasonably expect to secure a graduate assistantship. Students in the upper twenty-five per cent of the senior classes a t Howard in recent years have experienced little difficulty in obtaining assistantships from universities of recognized standing. Two means are employed to acquaint the student with current research in American universities. One is through journal reports, and the other is by means of talks by members of the staff. The journal reports are conducted just as in the familiar journal clubs of a graduate school, except that the articles selected are from leading research men in this country. The volumes of the "Annual Survey of American Chemistry" supply ahundant matexial for such seminar reports. The remarks by the staff members are confined to institutions with which they are personally acquainted, and to individuals whose work they have followed with some persistence. In these talks the student finds crystallized the arguments, first suggested when he was a freshman, and often repeated thereafter, that the surest way to lay a broad and firm foundation for his professional career is through graduate study. Not every student will profit from a graduate course of study, but we try to eliminate most of those who would not in the twentyfive to thirty-five per cent of failures in the first-year professional course. The result of this emphasis upon further training is apparent in the fact that of the total number majoring in the department during the past six years, between forty-five and fifty per cent have entered graduate institutions. This result is made more significant by the location of the college in one of the strongest and most rapidly growing industrial centers in the south. In conclusion, we have outlined a program which has proved each year more ambitious than we have been able to realize. We slate frankly to the students a t the very beginning, however, that a seminar is not so much a place where knowledge is gained as it is a meeting in which each individual
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student is led to discover his own strength and weakness. We can do little more in a seminar than point to doors of opportunity through which the student will have to force his way by his own efforts. A seminar, graduate or undergraduate, which holds as its objectives the orientation of the student in his present location, and the pointing of the way into the future, has remained true to the basic meaning of the word seminar.
