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Back to School A round Labor Day, a series of distinct changes herald the onset of a new season. The days / % suddenly seem very short. In much of the country, the temperatures, though still high, X J L don't seem as oppressive. And the leaves abruptly lose their summer-green color. Autumn? Not yet, but it is the season of the beginning of the school year, when millions of youngsters and young adults set off to everything from preschool to graduate institutions. But judging from the letters C&EN receives, for many students, teachers, and professors these are difficult times to be going back to school. Leave aside the obvious problems—crime, drugs, and financially strapped budgets. What troubles our letter writers can be divided into two major areas: Students' attitudes toward learning, and the quality (and quantity) of graduate education. This week's Letters Department has a selection of the many communications that C&EN has received in the past month on graduate and Ph.D. education. It is a subject that strikes a responsive chord, generating more letters than any other single subject. C&EN has already published more than a dozen letters on this topic since the beginning of the year. The questions are repeated over and over: Are graduate schools producing too many Ph.D.s? Are they producing the "right" kind of Ph.D.s? The proposed solutions are repeated over and over again, too. Close down some graduate schools. Require internships in industry. Broaden Ph.D. education. Many people are studying the issue. Next month, the ACS Presidential Task Force on the Study of Doctoral Education in Chemistry is scheduled to issue its final report. The task force was appointed in 1994 by then-ACS President Ned Heindel as an outgrowth of a colloquium called "Shaping the Future: The Chemical Research Environment in the Next Century." In November, President-Elect Ronald Breslow will convene a group of distinguished chemistry department chairmen and industrial representatives to examine Ph.D. graduate curricula. And last week, the National Research Council issued its long-awaited report, "Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States: Continuity and Change." The report, the first update of NRCs 1982 assessment of graduate programs, examines the quality and effectiveness of more than 3,600 doctoral programs, including chemistry (see page 6). Will any of these efforts answer all the questions? Possibly not, but they are all important contributions to the discussion. On the learning front, in the next few weeks C&EN will publish a selection of letters in which the writers lament bygone times. In these letters, students blame teachers for not caring about teaching, being ill-prepared, and acting self-absorbed. In turn, teachers and professors blame students for not caring about the hard work of learning, being ill-prepared, and acting self-absorbed. Where does the truth lie? As in most situations, probably somewhere in between. My sincere hope is that most students and their teachers and professors do care deeply about learning and teaching. But the tenor of these letters—their divisiveness and stridency—deeply saddens me. When I was a child, I greeted the advent of the school year with a great sense of adventure. I could never fall asleep the night before the first day of school. No matter how wonderful and how much fun my summer had been, I couldn't wait to get back to school. This was an attitude that prevailed my entire academic life. And I suspect that it still prevails for many kids today. In turn, I had teachers and professors who seemed eager to teach and who were available to sort out the tough problems: Mrs. Atchison (we never knew her first name) in third grade, Bernard Stockton in eighth-grade science, John F. Nelson in llth-grade chemistry, Charles R. Naeser in freshman chemistry, Curt W. Reimann in molecular spectroscopy in graduate school—these were educators who instilled a sense of the excitement and worth of chemistry. The change of season is an insistent reminder to all in the chemical educational enterprise—students and educators alike—that going back to school should be a joy, not a thankless chore. Madeleine Jacobs Editor
Views expressed on this page are those of the author only and not necessarily those of ACS
SEPTEMBER 18,1995 C&EN
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