Charles Hurd and Colloid Research at Union College, William J. Hagan, Jr. St. Anselm College, Manchester, NH 03102 In the spring of 1959, two major conferences on the support of research were held within a few weeks of uneanother: the first symposium, a cosmopolitan affair with a distinguished list of participants from academe and industry (I), took place in May at the Rockefeller Institute in New York and was highlighted by President Eisenhower's keynote sneech announcine his decision to reauest a coneressional Gpropriation of $100 million for t h e construeti& of the Stanford Linear Accelerator (2). The followine month a more modest meeting convened in the provincial setting of Wooster. Ohio. and included representatives from 30 college chemistry departments who met to discuss the role of I& search in the liberal arts college (3). While the Wooster Conference lacked the fanfare of a major policy address by a US. president, its report did conclude that the liberal arts college serves a vital function in educating future scientists and that research a t the undergraduate level ought to be develoned as an internal Dart . of that trainine (3). ~ n e ' o fthe institutions represented in ~ o k t ewas r Union College (Schenectady, New York), where an active undergraduate research program had been maintained for 36years under the supervision oi colloid chemist Charles Hurd ( 4 ) . The problems that Hurd had encountered in pursuing publishable research within a liberal arts institution wereshared by many of the scientists attending the Wooster Conference, and their concerns exhibit a striking similarity to recent discussions of the factors involved in the implementation of research a t undergraduate colleges ( 5 6 ) . An examination of Hurd's professional life provides insights into the requirements for a sustained research effort within a liberal arts college and thus furnishes a much-needed historical perspective on the evolution of undergraduate research. While the American college long provided a hospitable environment for scientists before the emergence of the modern research university (7,8),the present study permits an understanding of the development of chemical research in the liberal arts college during the 20th century.
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Setting the Agenda wlth Slllclc Acld Gels Charles B. Hurd (1894-1979) was born in New Britain, Connecticut, where his father worked as an engineer (4). After graduating from the local high school Hurd entered Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, where as a chemistry major enrolled in a required research course he came under the tutelage of Farrington Daniels, a physical chemist who had just received his PhD under T. W. Richards a t Harvard and who would later receive international recognition as head of a prolific research group at the University of Wisconsin and as president of the American Chemical Society (9). While the schedule at WPI limited Daniels to just two and a half days each week for research, he did initiate a project with undergraduates on model systems for nitrogen fixation; Hurd would later observe (10) that his mentor had shown "by his own skill and ability to drive Presented at the Joint Atlantic Seminar in the History of the PnysiSciences. harvard Univers ty. Apr 127. 1986.
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himself, how much could be accomplished by brains and hard work". Hurd's experiences as a student in Daniels' laboratory taught him the limitations and problems of employing undergraduates as research assistants, and the two men maintained an active correspondence in later years as they each sought to attract qualified personnel to their respective institutions (11). After receiving his BS (1915) and MS (1917) in chemistry, Hurd was appointed as an instructor at WPI while he began working toward his doctorate a t the neighboring campus of Clark University, a small institution that had been founded under the ill-fated leadershio of G. S. Hall to nromote research and graduate education in the sciences (12). Here Hurd comoleted a dissertation in 1921 on the stabilitv of calcium hidride and calcium azide (13). His thesis director was Charles A. Kraus, a former student of A. A. Noyes a t MIT and wartime collaborator with Daniels who later moved to Brown University and achieved national prominence as president of the American Chemical Society and chairman of the chemical division of the National Research Council (14). Despite his managerial role as Director of the Chemical Laboratory a t Clark, Kraus maintained daily contact with his students and took pride in instructing them in the art of choosing research problems and designing the ao~rooriate Hurd thus had the for.. . exoerimental amaratus. .. tunate experience in college and graduate school oi working closels with two hiehlv adeut vhwical chemists. and he was undocbtedly influenced b; his'advisor's pedagogical approach. Kraus in particular emphasized the duty of college teachers to communicate the "scientific point of view and the enthusiasm that goes with scientific accomplishment" and he noted that research involvement provided a vital means for undergraduate faculties to maintain this contact (15). Upon receiving his PhD in physical chemistry, Hurd spent two years a t temporary faculty positions in two New England colleges: Colby in Waterville and Trinity in Hartford. In 1923, he accepted an offer of an assistant professorship from Edward Ellery a t Union College, which had recently instituted a BS deeree in chemistrv. (16). The denartment . also offered a nominal master's program that served primarilv to urovide an additional vear of studv to a small number o i ~ n i o graduates n who wished to defer entry into a doctoral program. Thus the college focussed on undergraduate instruction, and the program that chairman Ellery introduced for chemistry majors included a required course in independent research (10). Since Ellery himself was not actively involved in laboratory work, preferring instead to serve in administrative roles as dean of Union's facultv and national secretary of Sigma Xi (17),the task of implementing the new research course fell to the voune facultv member from Trinity College. Hurd's early research with Union students involved an extension of his own graduate work on properties of alkali metal compounds, but be soon shifted his efforts to the study of silicic acid gels (18). Colloid chemistry at this time was a rapidly expanding discipline that promised new insights into common problems as well as a possible explanaVolume 65
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tion of the nature of biological systems (19). Schenectady was also a . orooitious location in which to undertake this . work because of the proximity to General Electric, where Irving Langmuir was engaged in the physical characterization of interfacial processes (20). However, there were more practical considerations that made colloid research especially appropriate for Hurd and his students: the materials were relatively inexpensive and the studies were easy to perform. The phenomenon that they studied-the "setting" or hardening of a gel-was usually determined by inserting a t various interv&"ashort glass rod at an angle of twenty degrees to the vertical into the mixture" and observing whether the rod lell nver; this simple technique permitted Hurd'i students to measure the-time ofset" to within nn experimental errur of 2%(21). Such orocedures, while lacking in suphistication, were ideally suited to the limited means of small college (10). The focus of Hurd's research a t Union was the mechanism of the sol-to-pel transformation of silicic acid (22). Based upon a variety of observations by his students and by other groups, Hurd interpreted the setting of silicic acid in terms of a condensation of monomers leadine" to the formation of siloxane-bridged chains of progressively increasing molecular weight:
a
Hurd's kinetic studies, which yielded an activation energy of 16.6 kcallmol for this orocess, strongly supported the concept that gelation was a chemical iea&ibn (23). Ernst Hauser, a noted colloid chemist at MIT, credited Hurd with the development of the theory of condensation polymerization, which became a central part of the fibrillar model of silicic pels (241. - ~ - ~ -acid ~~~-~~ - ~ , ~ , Hurd thus maintained a continuous research program that ultimately yielded 34 publications, mostly in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and the Journal of Physical Chemistry. The pattern of these investigations was very similar: one or more undergraduates would spend an academic year studying the effect of one variable (temperature, pH, salt concentration, etc.) on the setting of the silicic acid gel, the student would submit the results as a senior thesis, and Hurd would publish the research as a short paper with the student as coauthor. The result (25)was a series of brief, rather empirical articles with similar titles, "The Effect of X on the Time of Set". The findings from Union were also presented a t national conferences such as the annual colloid symposia (26). While Hurd's work was restricted to a relativelv narrow research area and he conservativelv avoided making many generalizations, he did amass an impressive arravarfdataon the behavior ofsilirarels (27). Implicit in his chemist that gelaapproach was the conviction of a tion merited quantitative study for its own intrinsic value, and Hurd initially eschewed the applied aspects of colloid science with the remark (28) that he saw "no direct technical application for this work". A major result of Hurd's activities a t Union College was that his laboratory provided a training ground for future chemists and helped establish his institution as a leader in undergraduate research during this period; based upon a tabulation of pages published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society from 1927 to 1941, Union ranked among the dozen most prolific liberal arts colleges in the nation (29). Indeed, these 12 institutions (which also included Mt. Holyoke, Trinity, Amherst, Barnard, Depauw, Vassar, Swarthmore, Wesleyan, Middlebury, Wellesley, and Greensboro) contributed twice as many pages as the other 50 colleges that published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society during this period, suggesting that Union shared its emphasis on chemical research with a relatively small number of other colleges (29). This conclusion was 192
Journal of Chemical Education
reinforced by another survey of chemical research in liberal arts colleges that showed that the averaae facultv member in a sampling of undergraduate instirurions published less ~ thanone paper durinc the decade from 1937 to 1 9 4 6 , period when ~ u i d s a w14 m&scripts go to press (30). The success of Union's research program as a pedagogical tool can be assessed by examining the &bsequent careers of Hurd's students, many of whom continued their education in graduate school, propelling Union into one of the six most productive liberal arts institutions (along with Oberlin, Reed, Emory, Franklin & Marshall, and Hope College) as baccalaureate sources of PhD's in chemistry and biochemistry awarded during the period 1936-1956 (31). The importance of the liberal arts college as a "feeder" to graduate schools in the sciences has previously been noted, although the link between undergraduate research and subsequent professional paths is often difficult to establish (32). Nevertheless, alumni from Hurd's laboratory pursued successful careers in industry and academe, and they included executive officers of maior coroorations such as Kodak. du Pant. and Shell chemical, research directors a t Bell ~aboratoriei and Lever Brothers. and facultv members of eieht colleees and universities (33).Union ~d11egethus proviied a small but effectke source of ootential scientists and administrators who each gained their first exposure to research in Hurd's laboratory. The inclusion of Union College in the Wooster Conference of 1959 signaled the success of the undergraduate program that Hurd had led since 1923, first as director of the research course and after 1933 as chairman of the chemistry department. The rather remarkable feature of Hurd's career was the total number of students that he directly supervised: 128 seniors and 23 mnster's candidates (181.While he was oerhaps unusual among college faculty in that he had access to such a large quantity of manpower, an accounting of Hurd's other resources fails to reveal anything extraordinary; he had no external support on a continuous basis, he did not enter into long-term collaborations with industrial or universitygroups, and the few instruments that he employed in his reiearch (such as a Bingham viscometer, were huilt hy his students. Colloid science may he particularly adaptable to such an economical approach(34),as exemplified also by Harry Holmes's extensive research in this field a t Earlham College and Oberlin (35). Yet other areas of chemical research have been successfully pursued at liberal arts colleges; Mt. Holyoke's program under Emma Carr and her colleagues on the electronic absorption spectra of substituted olefins constitutes a noteworthv example from this era (36). While Hurd may have been extreme in the extent to which he exploited the studv of a single phenomenon like the gelation of silicic acid, his career nevertheless illustrates the process by which a collegiate chemist with an average educational background and fairly modest facilities worked within those constraints to,produce genuine if not prize-winning contributions to scientific knowledge. The Multlple Functions of undergraduate Research The close relationship between teachina and research in the liberal arts college i's supported by the-observation that institutions such as Union that supported active research programs also were frequent contrib&ors to the Journal of Chemical Education (37). Hurd in fact published five papers in this Journal, including one (10) in which he elaborated his views on undergraduate research. Stressing that the BS oroeram at Union reauired the narticioatiou of all senior chekisiry majors in a tiesis project, he observed that students with different abilities gained a range of benefits: the best undergraduates often obtained publishable results, while those of lesser talent learned the rudimentary skills of planning and executing an experimental study. Thus he challenged the elitest view that only the most gifted students
should be allowed into the laboratory (38-40) and proposed that all chemistrv students should he eiven an o ~ ~ o r t u n i t v to participate inqindependent resear&. Hurd also rejectei the notion (41) that undergraduates were capable of performing only routine tasks, and his denunciation of the exloi it at ion of ~ o t e n t i a lresearchers in such "hack work" evoked a sympathetic response (42) from his colleagues. The most important element in the success of an undergraduate research program, according to Hurd, was the selection of well-defined problems appropriate to the students' time and the available facilities, and his own program a t Union illustrated this pragmatic approach. The implementation of a research program in a liheral arts college thus requires both a commitment to science and a sensitivitv to the educational needs of underaraduate students. Research in such institutions is intimately connected with the Dedaeoaical mission of the college, as Hurd himself indicated in abaisage written the year hefore his retirement (43): In nearlv . 30 wars . of research on and oublication of articles concerning the setting uf silicir arid gels. I haw been aldr t o contrihutt tu the litrrarure and to makr thr nam? of Unim (:d. legc sicniflrant in thii field Honevrr, thr greatest rewit prol~al~l? is the fact that a good many young men, training to be chemists, had their first experience in this field.
The dual role of research at Union was manifested in the strong publication record of Hurd and in the productivity of the College as a baccalaureate source of suhsequent PhD recipients. Hurd's achievement was that he designed successful research nroiects that were suited to the economic and human resoukes of a liberal arts college, and he demoustrated that publishable results can he obtained by students armed with an undergraduate knowledge of physical chemistry and the patience to make repeated observations. The reliance of the college scientist on the efforts and skills of undergraduates thus distinguishes his research in important respecis from that in othe; types of institutions where the professional training of students is often secondary to the goal of advancing knowledge (44).Hurd's concern with both the pursuit of original research and the preparation of his laboratory assistants for graduate studies and suhsequent careers provides an excellent illustration of the pedagogical role of research in the liberal arts college. Conclusion Hurd's retirement from Union College in 1959 marked an end to the colloid investigations that he had pursued for over three decades, but i t also coincided with a growing recognition of the educational value of undergraduate research as evidenced by the convening of the Wooster Conference that same sear. His belief in the research potential of the liheral arts college found support in the increasing number of puhlications contributed to the chemical literature by small colleges (45). While Hurd's record at Union constitutes an important case of a sustained research program in a liberal arts institution, his emphasis on inexpensive experiments coupled with careful observation is not unique either to Hurd or his era (46). The liberal arts college has indeed offered a viable context for scientific investigations, and the recent emphasis on the role of research in undergraduate education operates from this rich tradition. As the historical study of the American college undergoes its current renaissance (47),
the critical analysis of research programs such as that of Charles Hurd may ultimately define a unique identity for chemical research within the development of the liberal arts college. Acknowledgment The author would like to thank the faculty and staff of Union College for their gracious assistance during the preparation of this article. Literature Cited 1. Wolfle.D..Ed.SvmmsiumonBosicReseorch:AmericanAssociatianfortheAdvanrr3. "Resesreh and Teaching intho Liberal Arb CoUege: A Report ofthe Waoster Conference'': Plivate printing: wooste., OH, 1959.
gold. N. Ed.; Smithsonian: Washington, DC, 1979: p79. 8. Gorman,M. J . ChrmEduc.
1985,62,33.
9. Daniels, 0. B. Forriwlon Daniels. Chemist and Prophet of tho Solor Age; Private Printin.: Madiaan. WI. 1978. 10. Hurd, C. B.J. Chem.'~d&. 1944.21.81. 11. Farrington Daniels Collection, University of Wisconsin Arehive., M a d i m , WI: this mllpctian includes 19 letter8 between Hurd and Daniels covering the p a r i d 1935-
1954. 12. Hall. G. S.Lifeand Confessions of oPsychologisf; Appleton: New York, 1923; Chap 7. 13. Hurd, C. B. "EquilibriainSmtema InvolvingCalcium,Hydrogcn,and Nitrogen": PhD Thesis, Clark University: Worcester. MA, 1921. 14. Fuoss,R.M.Biog.Mem.Nai.Acad.Sci. 1971,42,119. IS. Kraun,C. A. J. Chom.Edur. 1929.6.1310. 16. Fox, D.R. Union Coi1ege:An UnfinkhhedHistory; PrivatePrinting Scheneetsdy, NY, 1945; p 41. 17. Sokal, M. M. Am. Sci. 1986. 74,486. 15. Source: Soldent these3 supervised by C. B. Hurd, Union College Department of
Chemist~y. 19. Suedberg,T.;Tiaeliua.A.ColloidChemisfry2nded.:ChcmicalCatel0gC~mp~~~y:N.w Ynrk, 1928. d oflruing Lowmuir; Pergsmon: New 20. Suits. C. G.; Wam, H. E. Ed8. C ~ l l ~ r t eWorks York, 1962: Vol. 9. 21. Hurd. C. B.; Letteron, H. A. J. Phys. Chrm 1932,36.604. 22. Hurd.C.B. Chrm Rev. 1938,22,403. 23. Hurd,C.B.:Miller,P.S. J.Phys.Chem. 1332,36,2194. 24. Hauser, E. A. Silieic Science: Van Nostrand: Princeton, NJ, 1955;p 62. 25. See, for example, Hurd, C. B.: Day, W. U.J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1944, 66, 391, and references therein. 26. Hurd. C. B. In Colloid Sympoaivm Manogroph: Papers Pmsrnfod at rho l k l f t h Symposium on Coiloid Charnufry; Woiser. H. B.,Ed.; WiUiams and Wilkins: Baltimore. 1936; p 21. 27. ner. R. K. The CalloidChomistryofSilieoondSilieatos: Carnell: Ithsca, NY. 1956: pp 17.6
29. ~ s m p i yJ., R. J. Higher Edue.
1949.20, 208. Hurd contributed 22 of the 27 pages published in theJ. Am. Chem. Soc. by Union's chemistryfaculty 30. Romm, F. J. Higher Educ. 1954. 25, 238. This survey ineluded publications in all journal~eoveredby Chomieol Ablrmts, hut waslimited toeo11egpa within Pennrylvania. 31. ~ r y t t e n M. , H.: L.R. Doerorol Pmdverion in united Stores uniuorsities, 1936-1856:National Acsdemv of Sciencpa: Washindon. DC. 1953.
armo on.
fUnionl. R. L. S l o b d fPenn. Stetel. and A. A. Vernon fNartheaaternl in American
1883.
34. Carroll. P. T. "Academic Chemistry in America. 18761976: Diversification, G r o e h of Pennsylvania: Philadelphia, 1982: p 312. and Change": P h D T h e ~ iUniversity , 3% Holmes. H. N. J. Cham.Edur. 1954.31.6W. 36. Jennings. B. H.J. ChamEduc. 1986,63,923. 37. Sampey,J. R. J. Chem.Edue. 1950.27.69. 38. Mercslf, M. M. Bull. Am. Assoc. Uniu. Prof. 1928,14,277. 39. Kirk. R. E. J . Cham. Educ. 1932,9.280. 40. Yoe,.J. H. J. Chsm.Edur. 1941.15,410. 41. Cortelyou, W. P.;Cortelyou. E. H. J . ChsmEdvr. 1936.13,565. 42. Evans, W.V.;Cassaretto,F. P.; K1oae.T. 0. J . ChemEduc. 1951,2%, 143. 43. Memorandum toRowan A. Wakefield (Dir. ofDevelopment1,16Apdl1956:Hurd File, 44. 46, 46. 47.
union College Alumni office. Merton, R. The Saeiology ofSeimce; University of Chicago: Chieago, 1973;p 521. Ssmpay, J , R, J, Chrm, Educ, 1960.37,316. Z e n ~ e nM.; Restivo. S. Social Sci. Informotion 1982.21,447. Kaeafle. C. P. Science 1383,220,814.
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