Symposium: Inorganic Chemistry in the Curriculum: What Should be Left In and What Should be Left Out A half-day symposium on inorganic chemistry in the curriculum will be presented under the joint sponsorship of the ACS Divisions of Inorganic Chemistry and of Chemical Education, Inc., a t the San Francisco National ACS meeting, August, 1980. Speakers include R. J. Angelici (Iowa State), F. Basolo (Northwestern), F. A. Cotton (Texas A & MI, H. B. Gray (Cal. Tech.), R. A. Laudise (Bell Labs.), T. J. Meyer (North Carolina), and M. J. Sienko (Cornell). A one-hour panel discussion, chaired by G . A. Crwby (Washington State), including the speakers, H. C. Brown (Purdue), and A. D. F. Toy (Stauffer Chemical Company) will follow the formal papers. A decade has passed since the following quotation' appeared on the (pale green!) cover of This Journal: While grading a beginning graduate inorganic examination sometime ago I was startled to discover that the student believed silver chloride to be a pale green gas. and three decades since Brown and Rulfs wrote2. However, a t the present time a large majority of schools have to all practical purposes ceased offering instruction in inorganic chemistry. These schools are graduating "professional chemists" who do not know the properties or reactions of simple common chemicals, who cannot suggest means of preparing or purifying simple inorganic substances, and who do not recognize the hazards involved in certain reactions of common inorganic reagents. Is the inorganic curriculum adequate for the needsofthe Twenty-First Century? Has theneed for descriptive chemistry disappeared? Does the inorganic cunieulum adequately prepare chemists for industry? What influences affect the choice of material for the curriculum" Has the curriculum kept up with advances in the field? These questions and others will be addressed by the Symposium on Inorganic Chemistry in the Curriculum: What Should Be Left In and What Should Be Left Out, San Francisco, August, 1980. Proceedings of the symposium are to be published in the November, 1980, issue of the Journal of Chemical Edueotion.
' Davenport,D. A,, J. CHEM. EDUC., 47,271 (1970).
Brown, H. C., and Rulfs, C. J., J. CHEM. EDUC., 27,437 (1950), presented as part of the Symposium on the place of Inorganic Chemistry in the Undergraduate Curriculum, 116th National Meeting, ACS, Atlantic City, 1949. 2
Florida State University Tallahassee, Florida 32306
E. K. Mellon
Volume 57, Number 5, May 1980 / 347
