1. A. CAMPBELL Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California
IT
IS difficult to hew honestly to the title of this symposium. Few ideas are really new. Curricular ideas-wild, visionary, sound, farsighted, good, and bad-have been discussed a t length in faculty meetings and out, and even before symposia of this Division. Yet faculty are always hopeful for their mental progeny, and the chairman of the symposium has had t o decline papers because of the number of "new ideas" proffered for inclusion. Harvey MuddCoUege is most succinctly described as a small (350 students), private, liberal arts college with only four majors, all in the physical sciences. These are engineering, mathematics, physics, and chemistry. The college is the fifth member of the Associated Colleges at Claremont. Each student will spend about one third of his academic work in the humanities and social studies, one third in basic coursesin mat,hematics,physics, and chemistry, and one third in specialized work related t o his major field. A majority ~f the students will probably concentrate in engineering where the offerings will be primarily in the fields of mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineering. I t is presumed that most of the students will continue their professional studies in graduate work. During the first two years each student will take two years of humanities, two years of mathematics, two years of physics, and two years of chemistry. Each will also take a year of mechanical drawing, a year of social science, and two years of physical education. The emphasis in the humanities will he on ideas and their communication. The emphasis in the sciences will be on fundamental observations and their interpretation in terms of generalizations. Most entering students will have had a year of high school physics, a year of high school chemistry, and four years of high school mathematics. The first year of mathematics will include an introduction to the calculus.
' Presented aa part of the Symposium an New Ideas in the Four-Year Chemistry Curriculum before the Division of Chemical Education at the 132nd Meeting of the American Chemical Society, New York, September, 1957.
About 40 per cent of the vork in the junior and senior years will be devoted to the humanities. The rest will be spent in work closely related to the major specialization of the student. BASES FOR PLANNING
Chemistry is sometimes defined as the collecting of facts and the arranging of these facts into an order. However, the final chemical order and one's ability t o describe and remember it depend very largely on the insight and originality used in establishing the order. The same collection of "facts" can be arranged in many ways, but some ways will be far more appealing to one wishing to use the collection than will others. Our general thesis presumes: (1) That scientificknowledge is based on experimentation. Hence we shall spend four t o six hours per week on laboratory experiments and carry on extensive lecture experimentation in each course. (2) That experiments should involve the discovery of knowledge new to the observer and not readily predicted by him. Hence we shall make wide use of unknowns and insist as much as is feasible that each student work out his own method of attack on the unknown. (3) That isolated knowledge is of limited usefulness. Hence we shall investigate alternative theoretical interpretations and correlations of the experimentally discovered facts. About half of the available time outside the laboratory will he spent in full class sessions and about half in small group conferences. (4) That the establishment of a theoretical framework allows a very rapid and effective assimilation of further facts into a useful whole. Hence the detailed chemistry of the elements and compounds will be investigated after the general theoretical tools for their correlation have been developed. (5) That a job well done the first time minimizes future problems. Hence we shall attempt to use first class experimental methods starting in the beginning course.
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
THE CHEMISTRY CURRICULUM
First Year. We shall start, therefore, with a general chemistry course based heavily on laboratory and classroom experimentation (not demonstration of known ideas). Examples will be drawn from both inorganic and organic chemicals and their reactions. The first semester will concentrate on interpretations and correlations based on structural ideas-nuclear, electronic, molecular, and crystalline--with an introduction to the nature of dynamic equilibria. The second semester will concentrate on the ideas of dynamic chemical equilibria and their qualitative and simple quantitative treatment. During this first year each student will be developing his mathematical ability in the calculus and his understanding of physics in mechanics, heat, and sound. Secad Year. This course in chemistry will be an intensive treatment of physical chemistry with emphasis on thermodynamics and kinetics. We are discussing the possibility of introducing thermodynamics from a statistical point of view in terms of simple atomic and molecular energy levels rather than using the classical approach in terms of gross properties of matter. I n both years, practical simple examples related t o current research and engineering practice will be introduced. These two courses will be taken by all students and will serve as background for all further work in engineering, physics, and mathematics, as well as an introduction t o further work in chemistry. All upper division courses will, of course, be available to any qualified student in Harvey Mudd College or any other of the four colleges. But they will largely be populated by our own majors planning professional work in chemistry. Three full-year courses will be given for these juniors and seniors, plus a t least three onesemester courses. Third Year. A chemistry major will take two courses running through the full year. One will be organic, and the other, inorganic reactions and mechanisms. Each will be able to build on the structural, thermodynamic, and kinetic foundation of the first two years. They will treat the detailed chemistry of the elements and their compounds and will have a more complete theoretical basis of correlations and interpretations than is common a t this stage. Fourth Year. The heart of the work in the final year will be an individual, laboratory, research-type problem for each student. The preceding four courses should have provided the basic knowledge and techniques t o enable a student to attack intelligently problems in any of the simpler fields of chemistry. We also plan to offer one-semester courses during the senior year in advanced analytical, organic, and physical chemistry. Presumably no student would take more than two of these. A biweekly seminar will also be given without credit, but attendance and participation of all majors will be expected. EMPHASIS ON EXPERIMENTATION: ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
The question of the whereabouts of analytical chemistry in this scheme has no doubt occurred to many since the only course mentioning this field is the advanced VOLUME 35, NO. 4, APRIL, 1958
one. How can it be advanced if there is no elementary introduction? I t seems to us that one of the difficulties in most curricula stems from the "almost" introduction of analytical chemistry into the freshman year. But the accent is too strong on the "almost." It is our plan t o distribute the material ordinarily covered in the elementary analytical course among the four year courses outlined briefly above. About half of the experiments in the first year will be analytical, perhaps equally divided between quantitative and qualitative. Similar emphasis on accurate analytical procedures will be found in a11 courses. Furthermore, it is planned that the quantitative experiments used in the first year course will be essentially complete from the standpoint of analytical chemistry. All weighings will be done on analytical balances. An increasing degree of accuracy will be required as the year progresses. Work witb primary standards and precise volumetric analysis will be included. The advanced course will then build on the elementary theory and techniques which have been learned in the first three years. I want to emphasize again the importance we attach to laboratory experimentation and t o small conference sessions in all courses. Our plan is to include a t least four hours a week of laboratory in every full year course, and a t least one conference hour for small groups of students each week. Laboratory time will be spent on experiments whose results cannot be predicted with certainty by the student. There will often be experiments which are "ahead" of the lectures, and will present the student with situations calling for some originality in approach. For instance, we have begun the first year witb the following experiment: Each student is presented with three solutions labeled A, B, and C and identified only as "reagents." He also has available four or five solutions identified as "knowns." He is directed to use only the reagent solutions in discovering a method of unambiguously identifying each of the knows. He is then asked what possible interferences might occur were a solution to be made up containing two or three of the knows, assuming they did not react 'with one another. He is then given s. final solution, an "unknown," and asked to analyze it, using only his three reegentn.
We find that this is feasible as an experiment and that it is closer t o chemistry and freer of complicating abstractions than is identifying the various solutions in terms of chemical symbolism. Symbolism is not the basis of chemistry; substances and their actual interactions are. The most obvious new things about our four-year curriculum are the introduction into the second year of a full-scale physical chemistry course based on statistical thermodynamics and the redistribution of the classical analytical course among four others. Our own feeling is that our chances of success are based not so much on these reshufflings of content as on the likelihood that we can capitalize on and preserve a venturesome attitude among student and staff. To this end we hope continually to attempt challenging experiments which are difficult, not because they are tedious, hut because they require intellectual effort and insight for successful completion.
