Editorial Cite This: J. Phys. Chem. A 2019, 123, 3239−3240
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Research in Physical Chemistry at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions his virtual issue highlights contributions to The Journal of Physical Chemistry (JPC) A, B, C, and Letters from students, principal investigators (PIs), and collaborators at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs). In many or most cases here, the published research was performed exclusively or in large part by undergraduates as part of their bachelor’s-level scientific training. The collective breadth of these papers (which spans all of the topic areas and subfields of JPC) indicates that the diversity of physical chemistry research at PUIs reflects the broadening bounds of physical chemistry as a whole: these papers cover everything from pure experiment to pure theory, from small-molecule gas-phase chemistry to surface chemistry to materials development to biophysics. While the departmental homes of the majority of PIs on these papers are generally in chemistry, PIs from a number of other programs are also clearly producing relevant and exciting physical chemistry research (including PIs from physics and astronomy, geology, and engineering). These papers originate from a very broad mix of PUI institutions in the United States, ranging from from small private liberal arts colleges like Haverford College (1250 students) and Middlebury College (2500 students) to large, state comprehensive universities like Western Washington University (16 000 students) and James Madison University (21 000 students), reflecting the heterogeneity of PUI institutions whose shared mission is to provide education and training to undergraduate students in the absence of Ph.D. programs and large numbers of graduate students on their campuses. PUIs are a uniquely American phenomenon; as research in physical chemistry, and the reach of JPC, continues to become more international in scope, some of the most creative and innovative research in the world still comes from these “smaller” institutions in the U.S. The research reported in these papers was funded in large part by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), many of them “RUI (Research at Undergraduate Institutions)” awards, and some Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) awards), across a number of different programs both inside the chemistry (CHE) division of the Mathematical & Physical Sciences (MPS) directorate and other directorates (including Biological Sciences (BIO) and Engineering (ENG)). While there has not been a single unified home at NSF for either experimental or theoretical physical chemistry research for some time, physical chemists have found fertile ground across many program areas at NSF and other funding agencies, and we expect that this will continue to the be the case as the horizons and interconnectedness of physical chemistry with other fields continue to broaden. While we have largely chosen papers for this issue where the majority of work was performed at PUI institutions, researchers from PUIs are often sought-after and productive collaborators and coauthors with peers at research 1 (R1) institutions (https:// pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/bk-2018-1291.ch011), partly due to the different economy of scale associated with
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undergraduate research (where labor costs are very low compared to R1 institutions). There is a strong and recently documented consensus on the central effectiveness and importance of research in the undergraduate curriculum of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) undergraduates (summarized here https://pubs.acs.org/isbn/9780841231733), and with aspects noted especially for the physical chemistry community in recent ACS Symposium Series papers (https://pubs.acs.org/ doi/abs/10.1021/bk-2015-1208.ch012 and https://pubs.acs. org/doi/abs/10.1021/bk-2018-1275.ch013). Presentations and dissemination of student research in chemistry in physics has an especially outsized effect according to case studies (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0196338). While direct student participation in research has always led to a greater likelihood of graduate training, broad recent evidence (summarized most notably in the recent 2017 National Academies report on undergraduate research https://www. nap.edu/read/24622/chapter/1) also indicates that early research participation leads to greater retention in STEM and greater long-term success in science for all students, especially those from historically underrepresented groups (which in physical chemistry includes both women and underrepresented minorities). The diversity represented in the student authors of the papers in this virtual issue provides anecdotal evidence of the accelerating diversification of the physical chemistry community. There is strong historical evidence that, partly due to their focus on undergraduate research, PUIs disproportionately graduate students who go on to receive Ph.D.s in STEM fields; in fact, 8 of the top 15 “institutional yields” of science Ph.D.s (normalized by student body size) reported by NSF (https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/ infbrief/nsf13323/) are for PUIs, while the remainder of those top 15 are “very high research activity” R1 institutions like Caltech and MIT. Although the PUI physical chemistry community is quite broad in its interests and expertise, some PUI-specific recent activities indicate growing solidarity, unity, and momentum in its ranks. The MERCURY consortium (https:// mercuryconsortium.org/) is a large and growing group of computationally oriented PUI faculty that holds an annual networking and training conference and has had continuous success for over 10 years in garnering NSF-Major Research Intrumentation (MRI) support to build advanced computational resources that are dedicated to research at PUIs. Todd Hopkins (Butler University) organized a multiday symposium on “Physical Chemistry Research at Undergraduate Institutions” (https://tpa.acs.org/session/acsnm254/PHYS/physicalchemistry-research-at-undergraduate-institutions) at the fall 2017 ACS National Meeting in Washington, DC, and it is likely that such a symposium will reappear on a regular basis in Published: April 18, 2019 3239
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpca.9b02334 J. Phys. Chem. A 2019, 123, 3239−3240
The Journal of Physical Chemistry A
Editorial
the PHYS division at future ACS meetings. Physical chemists have been historically, and are currently, strongly represented in the leadership of the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR, https://www.cur.org/who/leadership/), which advocates broadly for undergraduate research opportunities across disciplines. Effective mentors and leaders are not just behind the success of PUI undergraduates, they are also often a central part of growing and guiding new PUI faculty in physical chemistry. Some shining examples of mentors and examples for us in physical chemistry include: George Shields, the provost of Furman College who recently became the first PUI awardee of a TREE award from Research Corporation (http://rescorp. org/news/2018/02/three-tree-awardees-named-for-2018); Robert Cave, a former associate dean at Harvey Mudd College and rotating program officer at NSF; Mark Marshall and Helen Leung, a dynamic duo from Amherst College who have also been productive as textbook authors; and Sean Decatur, a biophysical chemist who is the current president of Kenyon College. Furthermore, we acknowledge that many scholarly outputs from PUI faculty do not take the form of traditional papers but can still have outsized impacts on the field. Examples include the development of widely used software packages such as WebMO (https://www.webmo.net/) by (then undergraduate student) Jordan R. Schmidt and William Polik at Hope College, and JSMol (http://wiki.jmol.org/index. php/JSmol) by Robert Hanson at St. Olaf College. These are only a few of the distinguished scholars whose examples indicate how physical chemists can produce excellent research while also having large effects on educational development inside and outside their own institutions. We also acknowledge and salute the large group of PUI-trained physical chemistry faculty at R1 institutions, which includes several of the editorial staff of JPC, and we look forward to seeing many more PUIgenerated papers in JPC in the coming years.
Casey Londergan Haverford College
Joshua Schrier*
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Fordham University
ASSOCIATED CONTENT
S Supporting Information *
The Supporting Information is available free of charge on the ACS Publications website at DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpca.9b02334. Table of Contents for the Research in Physical Chemistry at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions issue (PDF)
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
ORCID
Casey Londergan: 0000-0002-5257-559X Joshua Schrier: 0000-0002-2071-1657 Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the authors and not necessarily the views of the ACS. This Editorial is jointly published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry A, B, and C.
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpca.9b02334 J. Phys. Chem. A 2019, 123, 3239−3240
