Retired Chemists and the Small College Chemistry Department William B. Wheatley, Cliiord J. McGinn, William J. Gottstein, Le Moyne College, Syracuse, NY 13214 In recent years, a number of seemingly unrelated situations involving chemists has surfaced. Some have been personal, such as an unexpected interruption of an established career pattern of the individual chemist. Others have been ~ r ~ a n i i a t i o n asuch l , as a corporate merger or move. To be specific, one can visualize a chemist who has had a longterm, mutually rewarding position with an industry being suddenly offered or pressured into early retirement. Or i t mieht he a small chemistrv department faced with an unanticipated shortage of faculty because of illness or an extended sabbatical. Or it mav be the nearlv universal problem of how to offer a stimul&ing academfc program &thin the existing physical, personal, and financial constraints. A t Le Moyne College, all of these factors converged a t an opportune time and in such a fashion as to provide what happens to have been a solution in which everyone has benefited. Le Moyne is a relatively small (about 1800 students) liberal arts college; its full-time chemistry faculty numbers five. The impending extended sabbatical of one member left a gap that could not reasonably be covered by the remaining members. At about the same time, a division of a major pharmaceutical company, located in Syracuse, was undergoing extensive reorganization. Many chemists were being transferred out of the state. while others were takine earlv retirement. One of these retired chemists was hired for one-year term toteach a t Le Moyne. At this time, the science building was heing completely renovated. Included in this renovation was the dedication of one laboratow for advanced laboratory courses. During the year, it wasproposed that the ex-industrial chemist would stay on, with the title of Senior Research Scientist. He would have this laboratory available for any reasonable research (reasonable being defined as somethine that existine funds would .. departmental . rover), and would supervise independent research by selected undereraduaw students. The administration readilv accepted tplus equipment that the company planned not tomove. This alone probably represented the equivalent of several vears' departmental budeet for lahoratorv . ..elassware. heating mantles, stirrers, etr. Because of the same contacrs, the colleee has acauired a used Varian A-80 NMR s~ectroohotometer and a n e w Bomem FTIR spectrophoto&eter. ~ a v ing these two instruments and an experienced person to oversee their use, we are now able to offer students hands-on experience in these important areas of instrumentation. Third, the students. They have been directly exposed to chemists with an industrial point of view; these chemists represent a total of some 100 years of work in different phases of industrial chemistry. On several occasions, we have also been able to refer students and other faculty to former research colleagues still on-site for special advice. With our indeoendent studv students. we hold hiweeklv seminars in whieh each studelit describes his or her goals, progress, successes. and failures to fellow students and interested facultv. This practice, very common in industry, has proved extremely valuable to the students (even though somewhat painful a t first). A final semester report, hoth written and oral, is required. The final written report is written in the style that would be required for submission to one of the ACS journals. Finally, a number of students have been helped in joh placement. Contacts between the retirees and their former colleagues have resulted in several summer jobs for undergraduates. Two recent graduates have heen placed in pharmaceutical sales positions--a type of work that would simply not have been known to them otherwise. Both are doing Volume 67 Number 8 August 1990
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very well. At this stage, most of our students have heen biology majors, usually headed for medical school. We have not made any converts to chemistry, nor have we tried. The students have, however, come through with a better understanding of what real-life chemical research is all shout, especially where interdisciplinary cooperation is required. We feel that this is a program that any college chemistry, or other science department should consider, particularly if there is an industrial chemical research organization nearby. Increasing numbers of experienced scientists are becoming availahle, many of whom would he eager to do some parttime teaching and/or research. As with any organization involving people, proper matching of people and responsihil-
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ities is all important. Part of the success we have had is the fact that some of the personal relationships of the people involved go hack as much as 40 years. We should give credit to the ACS here-these personal contacts are to a great extent a direct result of participation in local section activities over the years. Evaluation of any program on the basis of popularity is fraught with peril. But, without exception, student reaction has been most complimentary. We have had to do no promo.tion ourselves; the students have done it for us. This year we have had more students interested than we can adequately supervise. And the student we have talked with most recently wants to sign up for a year in advance!
