In the Classroom: Writing
C&EN : A Good Resource for Student Papers
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Evan T. Williams Department of Chemistry, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR 97219
In chemistry courses for non–science majors, it is common practice to assign a paper. Papers encourage students to learn on their own and are very instructive if the topics are chosen carefully. An assignment I have used for a number of years seems to work well and is based on the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society, Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN). ACS members who read C&EN regularly know that each issue contains a wealth of information of importance to the chemical profession and often features an in-depth report on a topic of pure or applied chemistry that is accessible to nonspecialists. Nearly every issue reports, briefly or sometimes in depth, on some aspect of environmental chemistry, for example. This is pertinent to the course for non–science majors, Perspectives in Environmental Chemistry, that I teach at Lewis & Clark. Currently, Chemistry in Context (1) serves well as the textbook. Each issue of C&EN, in effect, provides a snapshot of the chemical profession for that week. That thought, in turn, suggests that a student who reads a single issue could come away with a reasonably accurate basic impression, admittedly incomplete, of what is going on in the profession as a whole. Readers of this journal are well aware of the notion that the compelling reason to teach chemistry to non–science majors is not only to expose students to the beautiful theories and systematics of chemistry but to teach them what chemistry is all about, and in particular, to show them the importance of chemistry in the modern world. I submit that the impact of chemistry on the modern world and on our society can be found in any issue of C&EN by a reasonably careful reader. This premise is the basis of the assignment described below. The Assignment Students are required to read a single issue of C&EN and write an essay on their impression of the chemical profession based on that issue. They are encouraged to comment on every part of the magazine, including letters to the editor and advertisements as well as articles and brief news items. I hand out a single-page instruction sheet (available upon request by mail or email:
[email protected], or on JCE Online at http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/) in order to give the students a clear idea of what I expect in the way of content and style. Our general education requirements at Lewis & Clark College emphasize the importance of good writing. In general, our students are not surprised to be asked to write good prose in a chemistry class, but it doesn’t hurt to remind them that we expect good writing even so. It is important to emphasize that students should not merely paraphrase the articles, but rather construct an image of what chemists do generally and which issues concern them. Of course, some issues of C&EN make this task somewhat easier than others, but in my experience, this does not make a significant difference. I have found that a paper of some 500 words (2–3 typed pages) is long enough to allow students to produce decent essays, but some students tend to exceed that length and in so doing, often produce better papers. There are so many articles and news items in a single issue of C&EN that it can
be difficult to do justice to the assignment in a mere 500 words. Since introductory chemistry lecture sections tend to run large at most colleges, the instructor will also be mindful of the grading workload. Thus, I would recommend that the minimum paper length be 500 words, but that strict adherence to that limit is inappropriate and somewhat longer papers yield better results. I normally request an essay of at least 1000 words and students easily comply. As a member of the ACS, I receive 52 issues of C&EN each year. I save these and hand out one copy to each student with the assignment instruction sheet. This makes the assignment easier for the student, since the reading can be done at home (C&EN issues cannot be checked out of libraries). Because each student reads a different issue, this procedure has the virtue of ensuring variety in the papers (important for the instructor who must read many of them!). This also makes it difficult, if not impossible, for students to plagiarize or use paper-writing services and I have seen no evidence of such cheating. The students return the issues with their papers, making it easy for me to see how well they capture the essence of the issues they read in their respective papers. Although one would not really argue that a given issue of C&EN is timeless, issues up to two years old seem to serve the purpose well. Students appreciate getting their own issue to keep for a while and have fun riffling through the pile to pick out one with an interestinglooking cover. I ask that students try to connect their own interests to information in the magazine. For example, business and economics majors should, and do, find many items relevant to their studies and are often amazed by the size and scope of the chemical business. I have also found that by encouraging a creative approach to the paper, interesting results obtain. Papers in which students had a bit of fun employing their creative impulses are also more fun for the instructor to read. The Results A typical student response might start out or end as follows. “Upon getting this assignment, I was afraid that I would be bored and confused by dry technical material that I could not understand. To my surprise, I found much of interest and was impressed by aspects of the impact of chemistry on my life that I had never thought about. Reading this issue was very interesting and I was amazed to see how important is the role of the chemical industry in the U.S. economy. It was also interesting and reassuring to see (in the Letters Section, for example.) that chemists are concerned about the environment, the job market for graduates, and other issues that affect us all. Chemists are working to develop appropriate technological solutions for problems ranging from environmental to economic issues in the developed and developing world. “My overall impression of the journal is quite different from what I expected. This journal is not only dealing with science and scientific problems but also informs the reader about the interaction between the scientific world, industry and society in general.”
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In the Classroom: Writing Or, here is a direct quote of the initial paragraph from a student paper: “If one compiled a picture of modern society’s perception of ‘The Chemist,’ it would be a wild-haired madman with no common sense. When one even begins to mention that there is a world of completely normal functioning humans who are chemists, he/she is immediately put off as being in league with those chemical crazed scientists. These worlds of the scientists and the world of ‘normal’ people are not all that different. The journal Chemical and Engineering News gives an average person an insight into the life of the chemists and it is easy to see that the two worlds are essentially similar to one another. The structure, content, and style of the magazine shows that the same issues that are confronting the mainstream of society are also affecting the chemical world in a similar manner.” What more could a chemistry teacher ask for? Some of the creative approaches used by my students will exemplify the “fun” some of them had with the assignment. Several have written the paper as if it were a letter to their high school chemistry teacher describing their experience in college. One wrote it in newsletter format What’s
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Up With Chemistry? Another wrote the paper in the format of a talk-radio show discussing chemistry, complete with commercials straight out of the magazine. A student who might have been inspired by the movie Waterworld wrote her paper from the point of view of an archaeologist in the future who discovered a well-preserved issue of C&EN in a cave while visiting the planet, which had long since been submerged due to global warming. The magazine gave insight into what was going on on the planet 500 years ago. Thus, I believe that the assignment succeeds in fulfilling the goals set forth above. I suspect, although I have not tried it, that this assignment could also be worthwhile for students in general chemistry courses for chemistry and science majors. It might leaven the standard diet of equations, theory, and problem solving and give students a good glimpse of the world that they would enter as a member of the profession. Literature Cited 1. Schwartz, A. T.; Bunce, D. M.; Silberman, R. G.; Stanitski, C. L.; Stratton, W. J.; Zipp, A. P. Chemistry in Context, 2nd ed.; W. C. Brown: Dubuque, 1997.
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 74 No. 4 April 1997
