EDITORS* COLUMN
cut-backs in federal science funding and increasing pressure for involvement of universities in current problems of society, it is inevitable that during the next few years many universities will be launching interdisciplinary programs in environmental quality. Some of the difficulties that may be anticipated in such endeavors are discussed in a recent report, “The Universities and Environmental Quality—Commitment to Problem Education” Focused (available from the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C. 20402, $0.70). The authors, Dr. John S. Steinhart, of the Office of Science and Technology, and Miss Stacie Cherniak, a 1969 White House Executive Intern, visited six universities (not identified in the report) to make detailed on-site studies of existing interdisciplinary programs. They concluded that “two features are essential for such problem-focused programs to be successful (although they alone cannot guarantee suc-
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Circle No. 26 on Readers’ Service Card
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Substantial or complete control of the faculty reward structure, and 2. Freedom to be innovative in introducing course material, educational programs, work study progress, and curriculum requirements for degrees.” The report is critical of the existing mechanism of funding through project grants to a central institute, because “each professor quickly takes his share and returns to his department for his individual research. After a certain length of time the professor may be expected to return with a neat paper of research results. This can hardly be considered as a satisfactory model for Interdisciplinary research, and there is certainly no provision for the training of qualified individuals who will deal with the environment 1.
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Circle No. 104 on Readers’ Service Card
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 42, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 1970
139 A
Editors’ Column
for the on-going discussion of environmental problems.” The report goes on to recommend the formation of Schools of the Human Environment with federal support for continuing core funding of research and educational activities as well as “seed money” for faculty salaries and educational innovation. Work-study programs for both students and faculty are recommended. Some 10 to 20 universities are judged to have programs far enough advanced to be ready for funding, with some 200 or more potentially available for involvement, with funding of the order of or
$20,000,000 a year. Some aspects of the report are to be controversial and to sure provoke opposition. For example,
the new curricula, in cutting across the lines of traditional disciplines, will tend toward generalization rather than specialization, and questions will arise as to whether such curricula can be sufficiently penetrating to constitute a valid Problemeducational program. oriented research is under suspicion by those who maintain that basic knowledge already exists in these areas, so it is just a matter of applying known principles to the problems at hand. It seems clear, however, that the demand for environmental science programs will be so large during the next 5 to 10 years that it will not be a question of whether but how they will be organized. If the existing university structure proves too inflexible to accommodate such programs, they will tend to grow as separate entities either within or outside the universities. Both the curricula and the research projects can benefit from the involvement of those scientists who can envision basic science as supportive of problem-oriented programs. Analytical chemists in particular will find themselves much in demand for service operations, and they can readily relate both methods development and basic research to the problems at hand.
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Circle No. 129 on Readers’ Service Card
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 42, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 1970
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141 A
