A C&EN Feature
cal E Education Is Chemical t Crossroads? at the C 1 9 6 8 Priestley Medal Address, April 1 155th National ACS Meeting San Francisco, Calif.
Dr. William G. Young Vice chancellor of physical planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, he joined UCLA in 1930 as the 7th member of the University's chemistry staff. He received his A.M. front Colorado College in 1925 and his
**Most chemistry with a continually
departments
shifting set of
After 27 years of work on behalf of the American Chemical Society in the field of chemical education, I am often tempted to take advantage of a captive audience to discuss the problems which have been solved and those which face us today at what I call the crossroads of chemical education. Unless you have participated at some point or other, it is difficult to appreciate the magnitude and importance of the work in chemical educa82 C&EN APRIL 8, 1968
have been faced problems^
tion which the ACS has accomplished with the help of hundreds of members, industry, and government agencies, particularly the National Science Foundation. When the Committee on Professional Training first established a set of minimum standards to help evaluate undergraduate professional education in chemistry, only about 60 colleges and universities qualified for the approved list. Many schools had only two or three staff members who had excessive teaching loads and more course assignments than they were properly trained to teach. In general, chemical laboratories were inadequate and poorly equipped. Since that time, with the advice and guidance of the Committee on Professional Training and the approved list as a mild pres-
Ph.D. in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology under Prof, Lucas in 1929. He became chairman of UCLA's chemistry department in 1939 and vice chancellor at the university in 1957.
sure on the administrators, and with greatly increased support from industry, foundations, and government agencies, more than 300 chemistry departments have dramatically improved the quality of their programs, and the laboratories and libraries, so vital to them. Despite this obvious improvement, most chemistry departments have been faced with a continually shifting set of problems stemming from the second world war. These problems arose because: • Enrollment increased faster than staff or budgets could be increased to meet the demand, thus increasing teaching loads at a time when they were just becoming reasonable. • The chemical industry grew so rapidly and encouraged development of large research laboratories devoted to research in pure chemistry of the type formerly done only in universities that it generated a demand for chemists in teaching and research that was greater than the colleges and universities could handle. • The rapid expansion of scientific apparatus companies, which stemmed from war-related activities and more recently from activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
^The net result has been the of special-topic
advanced
and the Atomic Energy Commission, produced analytical instruments that have a big impact on the character of laboratory courses, thus making drastic changes in course content and even curricula mandatory. • T h e supply of funds and fellowships available for research in colleges and universities from government agencies and industry expanded rapidly and competed with departmental funds for teaching assistants who were needed to keep teaching loads from increasing. • The explosion of published papers, which resulted from increased research activity in universities, foundations, government agencies, and industry, increased the size and number of journals; this increased load of journals burdened the library, so indispensable in the teaching process, and put a drain on library budgets, which never seem to keep pace with need. Because of this greatly enhanced activity, new fields of chemistry developed in addition to or out of the traditional fields of inorganic, analytical, organic, physical and biochemistry. A few which have influenced or should influence the undergraduate program are physical organic chemistry, physical inorganic chemistry, polymer chemistry, and photochemistry and a host of other subfields of physical, inorganic, and organic chemistry. The net result has been the addition of special-topic advanced courses in the junior or senior year, which are too numerous to be required of all chemistry majors to say nothing of being part of the minimum standards. Nevertheless, there is always a tendency for representatives of each of these new subfields to feel theirs is too important to be left out of the list of required courses.
addition coursed
The ACS through the Committee on Professional Training, the Division of Chemical Education, the Advisory Council on College Chemistry, the Board of Director's Committee on Education and Students, and ACS's Education Office in cooperation with NSF is aware of this proliferation of courses and the need for modernization and has encouraged experimentation in course content and in curriculum reform on a broad front extending even into the high school. This work has been expedited by a multiplicity of textbooks resulting from the competition that developed among publishing companies as a result of the greatly expanded textbook requirements. Although many textbooks were five to 10 years behind prior to World War II, the gap between the time of publication of research papers and the appearance in textbooks is becoming very short indeed. This increased activity has also brought changes in course content. In my travels around the country I have been impressed by the fact that the average chemist, to say nothing about the average citizen, is frequently unaware of the importance of the various groups participating in ACS's program. Thus, he tends to imply that they are overlapping and constitute a waste of members' funds. Since I feel that most of these activities contribute separately and importantly to the overall success of chemical education, I will take a moment to comment briefly on each, hoping that the uninformed will see the light and that many of the scholars in the audience and those being honored tonight will desire to participate in some aspect of the work. The Committee on Professional Training in addition to administering the ACS program for evaluating undergraduate professional education in chemistry at the various institutions, periodically revises the minimum standards and serves in an advisory capacity on numerous problems presented to it by departmental chairmen who need help in upgrading the quality of their curriculum and facilities. This is particularly helpful for departments developing new programs at the graduate level since the committee has held conferences with more than a hundred department chairmen representing every type of
program from the very best to the poorest, thus giving the committee a very broad background for consultation in the field of higher education in chemistry. The committee's Directory of Graduate Research, published and distributed by the Society, is of great help to both faculty and students in evaluating the research activity of individual professors when considering graduate schools; it is revised every two years. The committee makes an annual report listing all of the schools that qualify for the approved list as well as giving data on the number of graduates from their B.S. and Ph.D. programs. The Division of Chemical Educations' major objective is improving the teaching of chemistry. This is accomplished by sponsoring chemical education programs at national meetings, publication of the Journal of Chemical Education, and preparing standard examinations that range from the high school to the graduate school level. It furnishes visiting scientists for colleges and sponsors numerous conferences and institutes. It has now become interested in the chemistry curriculum for two-year colleges and problems encountered by the transfer student. Many of the activities of the division attract the interest and participation of people at both small colleges and the large universities, thus providing for cross-fertilization of the good qualities represented by both types of institutions. The Advisory Council on College Chemistry is an independent group of chemists with an overall interest in chemical education that is not hindered by the demanding but necessary routine activities required of such groups as the Committee on Professional Training. Consequently, they have contributed valuable papers related to lecture experiments, supplements to the freshman chemistry laboratory, problems in junior college chemistry, and the role of the liberal arts college in chemical education. The development of teaching aids such as films and video tapes sponsored by this group should be of increased importance as professors of chemistry begin to appreciate fully their use in the teaching process. The AC-3 Resource Papers such as "Bond Energies" and "Inorganic Reaction Mechanisms," which have very complete literature citations, should be of invaluable help to those seeking to modernize the course content of their standard courses in chemistry. The Council Committee on Chemical Education could be of great value if more ACS members realized that this committee, through its open meetings, is an important sounding board APRIL 8, 1968 C&EN
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of member opinion concerning the activities of the groups mentioned and the activities of the national office in the field of continuing education as represented by the short courses offered at national meetings. Some improvements in the operation of the Committee on Professional Training have resulted from constructive criticism brought to this Council committee. This might also be true of the program in continuing education. A new and important contributor to the ferment in chemical education is the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Technology of the National Research Council. The report of the Committee for the Survey of Chemistry entitled "Chemistry Opportunities and Needs," prepared by a distinguished panel of chemists under the leadership of Dr. Westheimer, will greatly influence the future of chemical education. The thought-provoking reports of its subcommittees such as the one entitled "Chemical Dynamics, A Current Review" should lead to an even greater interest in the problem of modernizing the chemistry curriculum. When I speak of modernizing the curriculum I am thinking of more than the conversion from a 19th century science to a modern science by the use of equipment resulting from what Dr. Westheimer calls the "Revolution in Instrumentation." I am also thinking of streamlining the curriculum to weed out unnecessary material and courses, which would allow us to return to a period of seven years to complete the chemistry major and the requirements for a Ph.D. instead of the nine to 10 years that are frequently required today. The first step to encourage this was taken by the Committee on Professional Training by revising the minimum standards to allow departments to take advantage of better training in high schools and make room in the sophomore year for work that was formerly given in the upper division. This would allow the last two years to contain much more advanced work than has been possible. The second step was brought about by extensive experimentation, by many institutions, with the curriculum from top to bottom. This has brought us to what I call the crossroads of chemical education; one road calls for integration of courses such as analytical chemistry into the laboratory part of all the other courses, making them more quantitative in character. An example of this is a new sophomore course that integrates elementary organic and biochemistry with analytical chemistry. An extreme application of this approach would be the abandonment of all traditional course organiza84 C&EN APRIL 8, 1968
**T© increase the production
ofPh.JD.9s
we need to develop more centers of excellence**
tion used in the past, and creation of a series of courses based on studies such as Dr. Hammond's subcommittee has made on "Chemical Dynamics." Curricular revisions involving the first two years have become so general that the junior colleges that prepare transfer students need advice in planning the chemistry content of their twoyear programs. Should this advice be handled as part of the minimum standards by the Committee on Professional Training or separately by some other agency? Another crossroad involves reducing the required work of chemistry majors to a minimum to allow extensive optional selection of more physics, mathematics, geology, and geophysics on one hand, or botany, zoology, bacteriology, and molecular biology on the other. Although this appears to offer a greater opportunity for the chemist to broaden his background, the options available also allow for intensive specialization in one narrow field of physical, organic, or biochemistry, with inadequate cross-fertilization from the others. The final crossroad that we must consider is one that will lead to faculties composed of two types of citizens, those who have demonstrated their ability to do creative scholarly work to obtain a Ph.D. degree and those who have another degree such as that recently recommended for adoption by the University of California called "Candidate in Philosophy." Although most of my friends in science disagree with this approach, nevertheless many teachers of chemistry in junior colleges may soon come from this background. Some of these teachers will be very capable students who have taken this new degree by choice. Others will be those who have been unsuccessful with their Ph.D. thesis but who automatically qualify for the new degree if their department recommends it. Although some of these unsuccessful students may go into teaching today, many more will in the future, with a new degree as an
enticement. It is argued that candidates for the new degree will have more time to prepare for teaching and consequently be better teachers. My own experience would belie this. As I recall, the finest teachers I have known over the past 40 years not only had the ability to express themselves effectively and present their material in an exciting manner, but they also had great influence on the students as a result of their scholarly interest in and their driving desire to do original and creative work. I am still thrilled by a seminar in which one of our top scholars presents a controversial topic with scholars from Caltech, Stanford, or even Chicago in the audience to ask critical questions at frequent intervals, while most of our graduate students sit back and enjoy the stimulating atmosphere. This experience is particularly valuable for students who have been admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D. and for postdoctoral fellows who are still actually in training for teaching positions. Students taking the new degree would miss this valuable added experience. I am convinced that future professors in the small colleges and junior colleges should be trained in such an atmosphere rather than by a short cut. To increase the production of Ph.D.'s we need to develop more centers of excellence and also shorten the duration of doctoral training.
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