JOURNAL O F CHEMICAL EDUCATION
EDUCATING FOR INDUSTRY'S NEEDS' H.W. RINEHART E. I. du Pont & Company, Wilmington, Delaware
THROUGA experience gained by ten years of contacts with faculties and students in all parts of this country, I have the impression that no section of the country has any significant advantage over other sections in quality of student seeking higher education in colleges and that the caliber of student is, in the main, high. Especially is this true today when mature veterans, who know what they want from a college education and what they mill do with it, form so large a proportion of the college body. I s this highly receptive, deadly earnest generation of students getting what it needs for the years ahead? You are here today asking searching questions, courageously taking inventory of the facts as they are, and setting goals toward which to work. Industry owes you all the help it can give you, for something like 75 per cent of your seniors will accept employment in industrial jobs when they graduate. What are the jobs they will do? About two-thirds of those entering industry will put their technical education to use either in the process of making products in ways that employ laws of science or technology or in selling such products. We call these fields production and sales. The other third of the new men coming into industry from college will join research and development staffsand thereby close a circle, functionally speaking. The manufacturing group currently produces, and the sales organization sells, products to make money to pay for research and development that will in the future give them new and better products to make and sell. Such association of these functions makes every group depend on the other two and share equally in the credit for accomplishment. By inherent traits and natural interests men are often better adapted to one of these fields than to the others. Those who get most satisfaction out of association with people are more likely to choose production or sales; those who enjoy working with ideas will usually elect a place in research. If when a student matriculated in college - he already Presented before the Division of Chemical Education at the 111th meeting of the American Chemical Aacietyin Atlantic City, April 14-18, 1947.
knew in which of these three fields he intended to make his life's work, or even if he knew by the time he started his junior year, educators would have some guides to follow in establishment of curricular requirements. I mean by this that, in my opinion, there might be somewhat different course requirements for those who are going into production and sales, on the one hand, and those who will enter the field of research, on the other. But most men do not know certainly when they graduate and some even change fields years afterward. S o criticism is intended, for until they have actual industrial experience in a field, how can they know whether they will like it and are suited to it? The net result, however, is that you face the task of designing a curriculum that is adequate under, any conditions, that strikes a somew4at middle course in content of technical subject matter and leaves enough freedom in choice of a moderate number o' electives to equip those who know what they want to do to do it. Those who are uncertain may also get some help by "shopping around" on their electives and so reach a decidon about what they like. One fact is apparent A student who has elected to work somewhere in the field of chemistry must have a working knowledge of the fundamental facts of the science. These facts are contained in lecture and laboratory courses in general, analytical, organic, and physical chemistryandinrelated fields,such as physicsandmathematics. Beyond such courses, chemical engineers will also have a course n chemical engineering principles and laboratory, and will profit by a design course requiring use of engineering fundamentals and by such shop experience as can be given in college. I belie~;the student profits most by deep groundmg in fundamentals but I am not qualified to prescribe more specifically exact courses, amount of time spent on each, their sequence, and other mechanical details. The system of accreditation of undergraduate college curricula offered bv the American Chemical Societv and the Eogineering Council for Professional ~ e v e l i ~ m e is u tone good standard which your courses may be judged. Another is the report on their preparation which your
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own undergraduates, now in graduate schools or in in- problem and seminars as devices because both bring dustry, can give you if you ask them open-mindedly. student and professor into intimate and individual conIn fact, I believe you cannot afford to overlook the evalu- iact, develop independence of thought on the part of ation of your courses and faculty which your former the student, and inspire him to make research his life's students can give you. They are old enough to have work. I doubt that such intangibles can be transmitted opinions, they are putting to the test the training you by the professor to masses of students. gave them, and they are matching it against training Therein lies the danger of the situation by which of men from other schools. educators are confronted today. Many times more Let me return to the subject of choice of field of work. students are seeking higher education than can be It is to be expected that student and professor alike accommodated, even though enrollments are increased have paid primary attention to the satisfaction of re- enormously over capacities that were once considered quirements for graduation,to mechanical detailsof class- limiting. I hear that some universities run laboratory room business, to examinations, term papers, and the sections in shifts that extend into the night, as late as like. Through intentness on daily duties the long- eleven o'clock. Overnight depleted wartime faculties range purpose for professional training may be lost to have had to be built up to unheard-of numbers a t a time view. How and where are students to use what they when demand is high and tempting salaries are offered learn? Personal acquaintance with jobs that the chem- elsewhere. In the emergency, some mediocre instrucist and chemical engineer perform in industry is bound tors may receive appointments and be responsible for to point up instruction which the professor gives his the education of the next generation of college students. class. I recommend that professors make an aggressive The combination of mass instruction that reduces effort to find out for themselves what their prot6g6s do chance for individual contacts between student and inwith the learning they acquire. What are production, structor and shortage of able younger men to be added sales, and research jobs like? Summers spent on jobs to university and college faculties works adversely for in industrial plants and laboratories can be an inspiring best training of the present generation of college stuexperience to a professor and strengthen him in all his dents. Some relief in this shortage has come from incontacts with students. I believe industry will have dustry, for many able young men have left industry summer openings in increasing numbers in the future in the last couple of years to enter the teaching proand would welcome your services, but I know from ex- fession. Industry, in spite of shortages in research perience that right now men are not readily found. talent, has in the main accepted today's loss as a longStudents too will profit by summer jobs and will get range gain in well-trained students for the future. experience' that will make lively discussional material Most of you have long recognized the Value of inspiring in seminars or even in "bull sessions" the following instruction in the student's first course in your departwinter. Some schools have formalized the procedure ment, for many of us can trace our interest in our field for getting their students acquainted with industry by to that course in freshman chemist* in college. Psya cooperative schedule during the school year with chologists tell us ?what gets your attentiongets you." college credit. I believe that the benefits are about a For that good reason your ablest teachers should be in stand-off by either plan. The net result is certainly contact withimpressionable youths early in their college salutary and a great aid to the student when he has to experience. The window decorator puts the store's select that permanent job which coqforms to his apti- most tempting goods in thp show windows to catch the tudes. public's eye. College students are your public in the With such experience to draw on, faclfity and stu- same way. dents alike will more quickly recogniae fieldsin whichthe ' So far I have referred only to education in professtudent naturally belongs. For example, the boy who sional subjects. At least a few hours of credit are left was busy with extracurricular activities, yet still made to students to elect subjects outside the field of their fair grades, often h d s his best field in production or major subject. Are electives just "filler" around some sales. I propose that both faculty and students make supposedly precious object in the center of the educaan honest effort before the last semester of the senior tional ~ackage? I believe quite the contrary. These year to discover those who appear to have imagination courses should provide the substance that relates speand creativeness and should be encouraged to enter the cialization to a world of living human beings. Such field of research. Such candidates should be tested a courses might be compared to the piers of a bridge that, little more certainly by such academic means as ad- though they are nut the roadway, support it and the vanced courses in chemistry or engineering, a small re- traffic load. They are a fundamental part of'the whole; search problem, and seminars in which they take an ac- without them there could be no bridge. tive part. Encouragement to enter that field could then Social-humanistic courses have a threefold purpose be given to those who demonstrate aptitude for research, in the educational program of any college student, but with sounder reason than the attainment of high grades particularly of those whose profession has such controlalone. Few research men can be geniuses all the time, ling influence over mankind as that of scientists and enor need to be for that matter. There is much ordinary . gineers. First, men in technical fields need understandperspiration about most research problems. But ap- ing background in the history of mankind and the emotitude for research is necessary. I suggest a research tions that rule the human race. They will also usually
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work in groups in industry and be better prepared for their partin group effortif they have an appreciation of. human relations. Finally, their personal lives will be broadened in content beyond the cdnfines of the highly specialized field that provides a livelihood to most of us here. Because Dr. James B. Conant, President University, is peculiarly fitted to assay education by standards of both an eminent scientist and a farsighted educator, his recentcomments about humanizing the professions impressdd me greatly, In his report for 1946 to the Board of Overseers of his hstitution, Dr. Conant said:
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION The heart of the problem of a general education is the continuance of the liberal and humane tradition. Neither the mere acquisition of information nor the development of special skills ,d talents can give the broad basis of ia essential if our civilization is to be preserved.. . For such a program lacks contact with both man's emotional experience as an individual and his practical experience as a gregarious animal.. Unless the educational process includes at each level of maturity some continuing contact with those fields in which value judgments are of prime importance, it must fall far short of the idesL The student in high school, in college, and in graduate school must be concerried,in part at least, with the words "right" and "wrong" in both the ethical and the mathematical sense. Unless he feels the import of those general idem and aspirations which have been a deep moving force in the lives of men, he runs the risk of partial blindness.
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