ACS News COMMENT Committee status for Project SEED Perhaps the most effective way to aid others is to assist them in helping themselves. Project SEED does just this. Project SEED (Subcommittee on Education & Employment of the Disadvantaged), an ACS program that has received little recognition, has been quietly and successfully applying this philosophy since 1968. The program is designed to enable young people to realize their intellectual potential and to enhance the collections of college chemistry libraries. Project SEED has generated positive benefits for chemistry, chemists, and ACS. The program has assisted more than 1000 students in gaining knowledge of chemical research in nearly 200 colleges and universities. The journals placed in colleges in 1978 alone were valued at approximately $300,000. Chances are that most ACS members are not aware of this program. Because of its success, I believe the move to make Project SEED an "Other Committee" of the ACS Council deserves support. It is time this effort received increased visibility. If the SEED program was directed by a committee in its own right, the program could have even greater impact. Project SEED is not a "hand-out" program. Hand-out programs often have deleterious effects on the initiative of the people they are intended to assist. As its name implies, Project SEED exists to encourage growth, in this case growth in the aspirations and goals of economically disadvantaged youths. The excitement of intellectual growth and development is infectious, and those people inspired each year by Project SEED reach a wide circle of their peers when they tell of their experience. ACS members contributing to the process of attaining self-confidence, self-sufficiency, and motivation find their efforts to be a rewarding endeavor.
As I noted, Project SEED consists of two major efforts, a summer program for disadvantaged high school juniors and a Journal Donations Program. The summer program by far receives the greater attention. The summer program enables the students to work for 10 weeks in an academic chemistry laboratory. Each participating student receives a stipend of $500 for the entire summer's work. The objective is to enable students to gain some experience in an environment that may stimulate them to establish higher personal goals than they would set without the experience. Further, the program helps many students improve their readiness for additional education. The faculty members working with these students gain a better appreciation of the background and problems of disadvantaged students. A principal result of SEED is the personal relationships that develop among preceptors, their research assistants, and the SEED students. Strong evidence of the program's success is the many college preceptors who year after year seek SEED students. They have established good contacts with local high schools and have developed experience in working with young men and women from cultural backgrounds greatly different from those of the average college student. Local sections of ACS also have found involvement in SEED an experience worth repeating. Journals and reference material donated to college chemistry laboratories come from ACS members, chemical companies, or occasional excess holdings in libraries. SEED staff circulates information about materials available for placement to colleges and universities. In most cases, ACS does not become directly involved in the transfer of books and other materials. SEED does not attempt to create
CAS offers new computer file services Chemical Abstracts Service now is offering two additional services based on its Chemical Registry System computer file. In one, the Private Registry Service, CAS will build computer files of substance information from an organization's private files, maintain them on CAS computers, and provide remote on-line 50
C&ENFeb. 23, 1981
access to the files for searching. In the other, the Registry Profile Service, individuals or organizations can request information on specific chemical substances from the CAS Chemical Registry System in a variety of ways and, if desired, receive notification whenever updated information on a substance of interest enters the
more chemists. Many of its participants go into technical training, often in the health professions. Some have completed medical school, as did Francine Higgs, who was in the 1968 SEED program with Mary Aldridge at American University. Dorita McRae, a 1970 SEED student at the University of Pennsylvania, enrolled in Villanova University law school in 1975. David Blauch, a 1980 participant at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania, was listed as a coauthor on two publications resulting from his contributions to the research of his group. These are a few examples of the SEED program's "successes." Of course, many students' success stories are not so dramatic, but overall the SEED experience has been judged a valuable one for students, ACS local sections, high school and university faculties, and all other participants. Since inception of the program, direct financial support for SEED has come from gifts by individual ACS members and companies, grants from the Petroleum Research Fund, and ACS Corporation Associates. All gifts and grants go directly to stipend support. ACS has provided the administrative support. Additional financial assistance is provided each year by the colleges in the form of supplies and materials. Local fund sources often have been used to support additional students who do not appear in ACS statistics. Project SEED is the society's only social action program, and it is a modest one. The reasons for initiating SEED in 1968 are as valid today as they were then. Project SEED is a success, and I am pleased to add my support in the effort to raise its status to that of a committee of the ACS Council. Albert C. Zettlemoyer ACS president
system. The new services complement the CAS Online service which provides on-line access to information in the CAS Chemical Registry System through remote terminals. In the Private Registry Service, CAS will create and maintain a computer file of structural and other information on substances in a company or organization's private files. The organization's employees will be able
ACS News to search the private file remotely using CAS Online search techniques, which make it possible to search for substances that share particular structural features and display or print-out structure diagrams of the answers as part of the search results. They also will be able to update and retrieve other information in the private file remotely, search sub stance information from the CAS registry file through CAS Online to determine if a substance of interest has been reported in the literature, and periodically check new informa tion entering the registry to discover
when a substance first appears in the literature. Fees for the Private Reg istry Service depend on the size, content, and form of the organiza tion's substance file and the kind and frequency of searches performed. The Registry Profile Service en ables individuals or organizations to obtain registry information about specific substances of interest. Re questers can identify substances by CAS Registry Numbers, names, structure diagrams, or Wiswesser Line Notations. Information re trieved can include CAS Registry Numbers, Chemical Abstracts index
names, molecular formulas, and structure diagrams. The retrieved information will be provided in printed or computer-readable form at the requester's option. Fees for the Registry Profile Service depend on the form in which substances are identified in the request, the infor mation requested, and the use for which the information is intended. The CAS Chemical Registry Sys tem contains computer-readable structure records of more than 5 million chemical substances. About 6000 new substances are added to the registry file each week. D
ACS Tour Speakers for March As a service to ACS members, C&EN publishes listings of speakers at upcoming local section meetings. The lists are published once a month from September through April. Each list gives the program of speakers for the following month,
speakers and their affiliations, topics, sections involved, and dates of the presentations. For additional information please contact the local section, or the ACS headquarters Speaker Service at (202) 872-4612,
Speaker /Topic(s)
Speaker/Topics{$)
Section/Date (in March)
James M. Bobbitt, U of Connecticut Chemical approaches to home Northern West Virginia, winemaking Morgantown (2); Kanawha Valley, Charleston (3); Western Maryland, Cumberland (6) Electrochemistry of natural products Central Ohio Valley, Huntington (4); Upper Ohio Valley, Marietta (5) Thomas H. Crawford, U of Louisville Population Northeastern Ohio, Painesville (17); PennYork,Jamestown (18); Erie, Edinboro (19); PennOhio, Youngstown (20) Derek A. Davenport, Purdue U Dephiogisticated air, the making of bishops, and the founding of the American Chemical Society Noblesse oblige: Cavendish to Bartlett From Genesis to the Book of Revelations: 200 years of general chemistry texts written m America(n) Early vindications of the rights of women chemists John Eisch, SUNY, Binghamton Novel plastics from irregular research: Ziegler's discovery of olefin polymerization Novel organolithium reagents in organic synthesis (To be announced) Dean F. Martin, U of Squth Florida Aquatic weeds Chemical reactions of the sea Recent Red Tide research (To be announced)
Western Connecticut, Stamford (10) Connecticut Valley, Enfield (11) Rhode Island, Warwick (12)
Section/Dale (in March)
William O. McClure, U of Southern California Butterflies of the soul—a chemist's Montana» Missoula (2); Idaho, Idaho Falls (3); Salt view of mental illness Lake, Logan (4); Central Utah, Provo ($); Wyoming, Laramie (β) Rod O'Connor, Texas A&M U Cost-effective and learning-effective uses of instructional technology Chemistry of animal venoms It's not the bee's knees that get you: the chemistry of insect stings (To be announced)
North Alabama, Huntsvilie (10) Alabama, Birmingham (11) Wilson Dam, Florence (12) Savannah River, Augusta (13)
Robert Snyder, Thomas Jefferson U Northeast Tennessee (16) Problems in the determination of industrial and environmental carcinogenesis East Tennessee, Knoxville Relationship between toxicity and (17); Chattanooga, metabolism of environmental Collegedale(18); chemicals Nashville (19)
Mid-Hudson, Beacon (9)
Illinois-Iowa, Quad Cities Area (16); Omaha (19) Ames (18); Nebraska, Lincoln (20) Iowa, Iowa City (17) Central Wisconsin, Wausau (12) Upper Peninsula, Houghton (10) Sioux Valley, Sioux City (14) La Crosse-Winona, La Crosse (11)
Robert Steinbacher, Jet Propulsion Laboratory St. Joseph Valley, South Saturn encounter by Voyager I: Bend (16); Kalamazoo phase two of the Voyager Jupiter(17); Western Michigan, Saturn mission Grand Rapids (18); Northeast Wisconsin, Green Bay (19) William H. Zoller, U of Maryland 1980 eruption of ML St. Helenschemistry and atmospheric implications Chemistry of volcanic plumes Contribution of refuse incineration to urban aerosols
Central Pennsylvania, Lock Haven (2); Corning, Horseheads (3); Syracuse (6) Binghamton (4); Norwich (5) Rochester (9)
Feb. 23, 1981 C&EN
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