K. E. Kolb and Max A. Taylor Bradley University Peoria, Illinois 61606
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Chemistry and Civilization Origin, status, a n d future o f a chemistry course for non-majors
A plethora of chemistry courses concerned with the environment and/or society have emerged in our colleges and universities in the past several years. Some of these have been described at national and regional American Chemical Society meetings, a few in the Journal of Chemical Education, and one even in the National Observer. Often these courses are for the nonscience major or require a minimal background in chemistry. In contrast to the first-year general chemistry course for science majors, where there is some agreement as to course content and level, these new courses are quite diverse in purpose, content, students, size, intellectual level, and instructional methods. While among courses with such manifold ohjectives there should he wide variation, there is still a need for communication among teachers of such courses to develop some overall agreement as to the kinds of things they should include. Dialogues on this subject will help all rethink and restructure such courses for the future. In this note are summarized some of the factors that have been considered in connection with our "Chemistry and Civilization," a one-semester survey course offered each semester. The students are junior and senior nonscience majors, from all schools of the University, who have had no previous college chemistry. At present it is a lecture-type course of 3 hr credit with a class size of 40-70 students. The Need for a Nonmajor Course As with many moderate size institutions (-4500 students) we had previously offered only one general chemistry course. With an enrollment of 400-450 students the course had few (about six) students with majors other than science or engineering. Since we had offered only this one course for a number of years, we were obviously not reaching the 75% of our graduates who-were nonscience majors. A decisive factor in offering this course was that hy 1968 science was coming under increasing attack as the primary cause of society's problems. We felt, as many others did, that more scientists should try to communicate with nonscientists, particularly students with non-, science majors, and discuss what science can and cannot do. The layman should realize that science and technology have been enormously successful in raising mankind's standard of living, health, and lengthening his life-span; but he also needs to understand that these positive achievements have often been accompanied by negative side-effects that are harmful to mankind. Unfortunately the problems have frequently been unrecognized until they have grown to serious proportions. The Course Outline An outline for a typical semester is given in Table 1. Since some of the students have not had high school chemistry and most of the others need a review, about 30% of the course is devoted to some basic principles of chemistry including atoms, bonds, molecules, reactions and ~eriodicity.The remaining 70% of the course is con502
/ Journalof Chemical Education
Table 1. Chemistry and Civilization Chemistry 3VC-Typical Semester Outline lnlroduction What is Science? The Metric System l'hvsical Jlet hods of Se~aratiun Eliments and Atoms ofDalton The Atom Sinrr fialton Poioniciry
