The Search for Relevance - C&EN Global Enterprise (ACS Publications)

Wilbert C. Lepkowski, CùEN, Southeastern News Bureau Gilbert R. Parker, Cù-EN, New York News Bureau

The Search for

Relevance

It is impossible for the average boy to grow up and use the remarkable capacities that are in every boy, unless the world is for him and makes sense.

And a society

makes sense w h e n it understands that its chief wealth is these capacities PAUL GOODMAN,

ing Up

"Grow-

Absurd"

S

earch, rejection, ferment, and revolution: our national heritage. Our forefathers, rejecting European persecutions, settled a new land and then promptly squabbled among themselves, revolted against England, brawled into a frontier America, fought each other over a Union, squabbled again over unionism, communism, capitalism, and socialism. In short, ours is a nation of protests and choices; it always has been. Today's youth is little different than yesterday's, though faces and issues change. It is, perhaps, the nature of youth to protest and seek change. Today's youth protests and searches for individual relevance. A relevance that will lead to a better people in a better society. In this search for relevance, today's youth faces career opportunities that offer broad and breathless ranges of choice, especially if their educational experience includes a technical skill. There is one enormous hitch, however. Our whole technological society is being questioned today. The Puritan ethic, which emphasized conquering the earth for profit as man's

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C&EN MARCH 10, 1969

noblest spiritual aspiration, has long fluttered out the window; long, that is, in terms of youth's stretch of perspective. The moral sense of our young people, their professors will tell you, is more sharply refined, more sophisticated than that of the previous generation. Although their personal behavior is much less codified than their parents would frequently like, they sense social wrongs and the misuse of resources. They are hopeful—determined isn't quite the word because they often despair of the system—of setting things right. Today's change seems not so much one of values as one of style. Young people in the so-called "Eisenhower 50's," when noninvolvement reached its apex, had their grievances. They, however, lacked the urge to participate and the conviction that change was possible if you pushed for it. The civil rights movement with its sit-ins, marches, and voter registration drives has convinced today's youth that the system can be changed; they've been pushing ever since. Now, streams of thought and action flow into

Frederic R. Ssnti, 55, married, deputy administrator, U.S. Department of Agriculture's Utilization Laboratories, B.S., chemistry, Kansas State Univ., M.S., chemistry, Kansas State Univ., Ph.D., physical chemistry, Johns Hopkins Univ.

every conceivable and imagined pocket of injustice that, they feel, makes this society less than great. Marx, Marcuse, Hesse, and to a certain extent Fromm (one link, at least, with the previous generation) are the heroes of a great many of the young, even those who don't demonstrate. Each of these figures invokes the need to protest a society that encourages conformity, rigidity, and predictability. Youth rejects the buttoneddown mind. Their style is openness, honesty, and action. "Today," says Yale psychiatrist Kenneth Kenniston, "popularity has become a dirty word. Nor does 'getting ahead in the world' provide an answer for intellectual students. Most of them start out already ahead in the world—the children of well-educated and well-situated middle class parents. For these students the old American dream of giving one's children 'a better chance' makes little sense. They find it pointless to struggle for greater affluence when they already have more than enough. They are more worried about how to live with what they have."

Fred Senti, a Kansan, doesn't use too many words to make a point, and he hates the word "bureaucrat." "It has all the worst connotations of 'politician,' " he says. Everything else about him seems to be, quietly, positive. Running USDA's utilization laboratories ultimately involves getting people better fed and seeing that farmers get a better return for their money. Out of the research at those laboratories has come improved washwear cotton fabrics, shrink-proof woolens, plasticizers from animal fats, frozen orange juice, a mass-production technique for penicillin, and other useful developments. "What I like about this work is that you see these developments used; you see them advance to the market place. I'm in administration now, but I never have lost my interest in basic chemistry, especially the relation of molecular structure and conformation to the properties of molecules. I always took a broad interest in chemistry and that's what, I suppose, led me into administration." For years Dr. Senti worked as a chemist in the Eastern Division near Philadelphia. Then, he went on to direct the Northern Division in Peoria, 111. "I have a great respect for the scientist who can bring a research finding up to practical fruition. We need basic research people, but we also need people with the insight to bring research to practical use. You can spot a scientist with management capability by observing what he's doing with his bench problem, how he works with other people, whether he stimulates others. Everybody doesn't have to be an extrovert. A manager does have to interest others in ideas; he has to stimulate; he has to cooperate. In the past few years at USDA we have put more emphasis on supervisory training. "One of the things that keeps me enthusiastic is developing new foods for the world's poor people. There's been a lot of concern about the world food supply, and I've been fairly close to that. I'm staff officer for the committee on processed foods for the developing nations. We make recommendations as to what processed foods can best go into overseas shipment for the donation programs. One example is corn soy milk blend, a 20% balanced protein drink that contains all the essential minerals and vitamins. About 700 million pounds of this drink have been distributed to 100 countries through the Agency for International Development. Several months ago I was in India, and I saw it used in their preschool and school lunch programs. I don't think the developed countries ought to be expected to feed the world, but I do think we can show the other countries how they can make better use of their resources to grow and process food themselves. From my India visit, I'm convinced that the developing countries can treble their output per acre. "For the future, agricultural research will be turned further toward meeting broad social needs. More emphasis will be on the low-income groups, rural folk, on environmental quality, and rural economic development. There will be increased emphasis on nutrition research, especially on fat and carbohydrate metabolism and on nutritional status indexes. The results will provide the basis for better nutritional guidelines to the public. "I think I'd rather be here than in industry, because here I have a broader feel for what is needed. Industry has a narrower range of interests, and it is more interesting to me to have the wide range. I have a lot of challenging things to do and be concerned with." Career Opportunities

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George R. Vila, 60, married, president and chairman, Uniroyal, Inc., B.A., liberal arts, Wesley an Univ., M.S., chemical engineering, MIT

Never before in such numbers has youth protested the aims and structure of our established society. Backed by the values of their political and philosophical prophets, by their bank of knowledge, and by their social action experience they want to change society. Maybe they're too restless; nevertheless, they think the problems are urgent. We are still in an arms race. Air and water are still getting dirtier, despite the recent proliferation of antipollution laws. Children in the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia, and the urban ghettoes are still undernourished and stunted. Name the problems, and youth will tell you they can't understand why a rich society can't just go out and rid itself of them. The lesson of 1968, said John Kenneth Galbraith late last year, "was that the organization can be opposed." Uprisings at Columbia, Howard, Brandeis, San Francisco State, and Berkeley led to quick changes within those institutions. Demanding it, the young were given a voice in the decisions that affected them. It wasn't only the students who were disaffected, though. Faculty also protested scholastic hierarchies that ignored soliciting any contributions that the young post-college mind could make. A commission headed by Harvard's Archibald Cox was appointed to investigate the causes of the Columbia uprising. Some of the commission's comments about the young insurrectionists ran directly counter to the national opinion that youth was going down the ethical drain, the product of a decaying, permissive society: "The present generation of young people in our universities," says the report, "is the best informed, the most intelligent, and the most idealistic this country has ever known. It is also the most sensitive to public issues, and the most sophisticated in political tactics. Perhaps because they enjoy the affluence to support their ideals, today's undergraduate and graduate students exhibit, as a group, a higher level of social conscience than preceding generations." These are rather compli6A

C&EN MARCH 10, 1969

"The president's office, you might say, is where the buck stops. Whoever sits in that office gets only the company's toughest problems. He's on the firing line, right in the center of things—unlike his advisers and consultants who might be elsewhere in the moment of truth. Under these pressures, he's stimulated to making his maximum contribution. I think that knowing I'm doing just this is a deep satisfaction I feel in being president. Simply, I enjoy my job. "Today, industry leaders are confronted with a generation of doubters—young people and students who show no interest in business careers, who criticize industry for not being involved in social issues, and who question the ethics of making a profit. These doubters tax our patience at times. But they carry the seeds of invention, of renaissance, you might say. I personally believe that we must have them with us. "Generally, I think company managements have failed to communicate effectively with the public, perhaps because they're afraid of being labeled "corporate dogooders. It's time we take a fresh look at our reluctance to speak out and act on social matters. We have to present our case more informatively and more clearly to everyone. "Let me give an example. Businessmen are fond of saying that they're in business to make a profit. I think this expression is misleading and, in fact, muddles our communication with people. Why? Well, it equates profit to exploitation—and in doing so, it alienates some students to the whole free enterprise system. What those businessmen really mean is that they're in business to perform useful services, and the profit they make is a measure of how well they perform their services. "As early as possible in a career, a man should get with a good company and stay with it. He should make the moves he feels necessary within the first five to 10 years of his professional life. During that time, he can benefit most from any such moves in terms of finding himself . . . and increasing his salary. After that time, he generally sees diminishing returns in further moves unless he's hit it so big that he can move about at the top, scientifically or managerially. "As a man gains industrial experience, he should determine whether he's temperamentally a 'generalist,' or a 'specialist,' or both. To qualify for top management positions and to enjoy living with the demands of such work, he should ideally be both. He has to juggle many balls and, at the same time, delve into problems in great depth. "Men who are both versatile and intellectually thorough are rare. Usually, a college graduate's first assignments challenge him as a specialist. After some time, he usually has the chance to broaden himself as a generalist. Often, though, such a man prefers to continue working as a specialist in areas where the demands for immediate results and decisions are lighter but where the demands for intellectual achievement are more severe."

of their leisure time. They have their circle of friends they socialize with but whom you can tell they really don't like very much. I think a lot of young people think that if they go into industry they aren't going to do any­ thing relevant to present or future social problems. In­ dustry is going to have to show that it is relevant." Carol Martinson and Donald Marquardt are successful students at Grinnell. They neither appear like nor aspire to the hippie colony that forms part of the Grinnell scene. They can identify with it, though. The phenom­ enon of this pair of undergraduates is their adaptability but, with it all, their sureness. Chemistry may be a square subject and Don and Carol may seem square, but their interests range into areas that definitely are not square, such as pollution and educating the poor through Project SEED (subcommittee on education and employment of the disadvantaged). They are socially concerned, but coupled with that they have a pretty good idea of how to get things done. Their interest is to build.

Carol L. Martinson, 21, single, undergraduate chemistry major—Junior; Donald N. Marquardt, 20, single, under­ graduate chemistry major—Senior; Grinnell College From conversation over coffee come these observations of two undergraduates in mid-America. They are aware, adult, serious, unawed, directed. Chemistry is enjoyable to them, but they realize its diminishing glamor to the average college student. They appreciate the liberal arts atmosphere and the smallness of Grinnell. They value the openness to experience of their faculty. They enjoy the excitement of shared learning—they with their teachers and fellow students—and the exploratory flavor of Grinnell. They develop personal friendships with their instructors. They hold no blatant fear of socialism, but rather view it as a possible means of achieving equality. Their oppo­ sition is to the act of killing, and they look upon Vietnam as a country where democracy as we know it is not a feasi­ ble method of government. Marquardt: "I have come to believe that studying sci­ ence gives me a special set of knowledge and a more ob­ jective perspective. Science majors tend to look at both sides of issues more than humanities majors who may be more subjective. A relevant future for me is helping others achieve their goals, and retaining an open mind. The academic life for students and professors at Grinnell accustoms one to new ideas, and we enjoy considering and discussing them critically. I've changed since I came here, particularly in that I try not to prejudge people's actions. As long as an individual's actions aren't injurious to other people and are best for him, it's OK. It's impor­ tant for society to recognize that values and interests change. On campus it isn't uncommon to see students changing, developing new interests, taking degrees in other fields." Martinson: "My conception of an open mind is keep­ ing oneself receptive to constructive criticism and positive change. I, too, like to see people involving themselves in new interests and issues. I hate to see people being manipulated by money and social position rather than enjoying a truly satisfying and complete life. I think it's important to be aware of and understand attitudes and interests other than one's own. It was a great experience last summer teaching swimming to ghetto youngsters in Cedar Rapids, seeing the contrast between their way of life and the generally comfortable way most people in Cedar Rapids live. Kids today often consider their par­ ents' mode of life meaningless and unsatisfactory. Too many adults don't enjoy their jobs or make gratifying use

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Vietnam: A persistent problem to all, particularly to those who are there such as Marines J. M. Ortiz, with the rifle, and Robert B. Moore shown here in the Khe Sanh area

Career Opportunities

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mentary things to say about a bunch of "anarchists." Columbia is an object lesson to all institutions populated with generally bright, critical people. At Columbia the vice dean of graduate faculties said that he was no more interested in student opinions than he was in their taste for strawberries. At Columbia, a group of black students was ad­ mitted with hardly any attempt to diagnose their particular needs in a strange environment. At Columbia, blocks of apartments were taken over by the university with no attempt to relocate the evacuated. To the young people this was symbolic of an institu­ tion gone stale. The place was ripe for protest and renewal. Dr. Paul S. Weisberg, Washington, D.C., psychiatrist, thinks that institu­ tions will indeed go stale unless they adapt themselves to a coming genera­ tion of young, alert people who will insist on participation in decision mak­ ing· "What we're working on today without knowing it," he says, "is de­ veloping a generation that is evolving a style of problem solving entrenched more in personality than in other values. For the young professional this means that the aims of a career are secondary to the processes of a career. For example, a person today won't decide that he wants to gain tenure at such and such a university because things are changing too fast in colleges. He can't look that far ahead." Youth today is experimenting more with their careers, he believes. They are wedded more to their professions than to their institutions and there­ fore have few second thoughts about moving from job to job for as long as they please. Where they can partic­ ipate in the decision making, they tend to remain. That, at least, is one explanation for the overwhelming pref­ erence of business school graduates for small, entrepreneurial firms. The big corporation is simply too bureau­ cratic and rigid for their tastes. They

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C & E N M A R C H 10, 1969

Thomas P. Gallagher, 31, married, chief engineering ser­ vices, Federal Water Pollution Control Administration, B.C.E., sanitary engineering, Manhattan College

Up on Tom Gallagher's office bulletin board is the saying, "Don't sell more of yourself than you can buy back." Gallagher views his career as a path that leads toward a higher and higher sales tag. He wants scope. "I think I know how I can acquire a better reputation as a technical person, but I'm not sure that's relevant to the problems we're confronted with. I wish I had more chemical engineering, public administration, and econom­ ics in my background. The way we sanitary engineers work is totally simplistic. We just haven't drawn on the field of chemistry or chemical engineering as much as we should. I know this is where some of the answers to water pollution abatement lie. You look into a chemical engi­ neering textbook and you see ideas that could have helped solve our problems years ago, such as the data on liquidsolid interchanges. Let's face it, the ultimate relevance of pollution control is what the people who have to pay for the pipes and sewers want. We technical people tend to get bound up with the trees and even the knots on trees instead of looking at the forest. The problem is communi­ cation between us technical people and the people in the towns. "We're just now beginning to develop a program for catching people early—one way could be through a course for high school biology teachers. Such a course wouldn't be oriented toward the beauty of ecological energy rela­ tionships but on the economic consequences of poor water quality. The problem with scientific people in this field is that they think that if they can discover the relation­ ship of one bug to another their responsibility is finished. My idea is that the people must be told: 'If you want this you've got to pay for it this way.' "The reason I came South is that there's so much poten­ tial here. The reason the North is in such a bad way environmentally is that economic development decisions were made individually without consequence to the cost to the environment and without considering the cumula­ tive related effects of other developments on the en­ vironmental and social areas. In their day they showed a favorable benefit-to-cost ratio related only to economics. Today we know that if you build a factory without water quality control you're going to have water pollution. You can take your pick today. Make $20,000 and live in swampy, smoggy territory, or make less and live in less s ρ oiled s urr oundings. "The problem with the Federal Government is that it

really doesn't trust the people to know what they want. The attitude, I think, is proper in race relations, but I found that in water pollution, at least, the local people generally have a pretty good idea of their priorities. Our problem here is to define where the most serious problems are in the Southeast. We shouldn't try to get into areas they can handle, but we try to perform services they can't do, such as telling them where serious unseen problems could arise. "I think that by now I have a pretty good idea of the technical things involved in water pollution control. But what I think I need now is an understanding of the psychological aspects of public issues; how to communicate well with those outside my field. There's always a tendency to slip into pomposity. Just look at the technical publications and you can see it. "I don't think I live just for today. We can see what's coming in the future. It's almost kidding yourself, though, when you look at our pollution problems such as nuisance algae. That's really an aesthetic problem, compared to the real public health problems in Africa and South America. We may be cutting our throats by diddling around with problems that in the long run aren't really pressing from a worldwide viewpoint—with over-organizing to solve problems that really aren't relevant. The Public Health Service was developing a wonderful program a couple of years ago. It involved an interdisciplinary team that included a physician, public health educator, sanitary engineer, and veterinarian. They would go into a rural or poor area and develop an overall public health program and would establish rapport with the people. They would get a real community dialogue going. "I'd like to end up in some kind of policy role because I talk a lot about what I'd like to see. I'd like to try taking a project from beginning to end and demonstrate what can be done to achieve real environmental quality. I don't want to end up being the buttoned-down collar efficiency type walking up and down the hall talking about computer inputs and outputs. My types of goals are ultimately idealistic but have to be tempered in practical application. Life is a series of compromises, but they should always be marginal, not basic. You've got to realize the realities of a situation but not let them paralyze you. "I started out with high hopes and sometimes I feel like I'm punching pillows and I say, 'Hell, nothing is worthwhile.' But that really is not the situation. It's OK even if nothing comes. It's satisfying to bring out the issues and get people talking to one another. It's like being a salesman. If you make a little more than half the sales, you're doing all right."

"Let me introduce myself. I am a man who at the precocious age of 35 experienced an astonishing revelation:

It is better to be

a success than a failure. Having been penetrated by this great truth concerning the nature of things, my mind was now open for the first time to a series of corollary perceptions, each one as dizzying in its impact as the Original Revelation itself. Money, I n o w saw (no one, of course, had ever seen it before ), was important :

It

was better to be rich than to be poor.

Power, I now saw

(moving on to high subtleties ), was desirable :

It

was better to give orders than to take them.

Fame, I now

saw ( h o w courageous of me not to flinch ), was unqualifiedly delicious :

It

was better to be recognized than to be anonymous" N O R M A N PODHORETZ, " M a k i n g

It"

Career Opportunities

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want action fast. While demanding participation, today's involved, more thoroughly educated, newspaper-reading professional is also becoming a critic. We are entering an age, according to social psychiatrist Matthew Dumont, when thought is being given to the clientele of technology; that is, the consumer in the broad sense. Such a client is not only a purchaser of the better life but also a fallout victim of loosely administered technologypollution, urban congestion, publicly questioned schemes, a multibilliondollar fortress of antiballistic missiles, and freeways that slice through and destroy once-cohesive communities. "The professional of the past," says Dr. Dumont, chief of the center for studies of metropolitan problems in the National Institute of Mental Health, "was used strictly for the solution of technical problems. The reason we're in an urban, environmental, and military crisis is that technical people have pandered their technical expertise to the decision makers. There's growing social and moral conscience among young profesContinued on page 14 A 10A

C&EN MARCH 10, 1969

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Carfyie B, Storm, 34, married, assistant, professor, chemistry, Howard University; B.S., and M.S., chemistry, Johns Hopkins Univ.; Ph.D., organic chemistry, Johns Hopkins Univ.

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"Howard University is typical of the five universities in the Washington area. Its only distinct advantage as an educational environment is that we face a tougher job in teaching. So it's more interesting. Here we have essentially an open enrollment and a wide variety of undereducated students. You can't water your course down, though, because if you do you'll have to answer to your colleague who's teaching the next course. My idea of success here is in the successful training of students in chemistry and being able to do a reasonable amount of research in the process. I don't expect to make any big splash in research; I think I started out too late. Some chemists I know think their idea of research is to go to Beilstein and look for compounds that haven't yet been synthesized, then go about making them. That isn't my idea of research. You might just as well go home and sleep. I believe a far greater contribution would be to help improve chemical education in the Washington schools. [Dr. Storm's research is on the structure of the metalloporphyrins.] "I think Howard ought to be interested in the five-mile radius around its campus. I doubt if Columbia would have had a problem with Morningside Heights if it had involved itself in the community. A person in a university should look for several significant problems to solve at any one time. One of the more significant problems today is our thoroughly sere wed-up communities. My goal is not to sit in some lofty research chair in some university. I don't see that as the most fertile route to go. Ten years from now I expect I'll still be here—unless of course they want to get rid of me. "Another faculty member, Jesse Nicholson, and I are hoping to start a summer project for upgrading the background of high school chemistry teachers in D.C. Teachers would come to the Howard campus during the summer and learn the latest developments in chemical theories and techniques. Another project, more in the talking stage, is a tutorial program for high school kids. They wOuld come here to be exposed to the scientific and educational environment, directly under the tutelage of Howard faculty. Tutoring one high school student isn't much of a professional enterprise. If Nicholson and I can improve education in the D.C. schools, though, we'll be influencing hundreds of scientists eventually. I think I read in C&EN that for every Ph.D. generated, 10 engineers are produced, who in turn generate 10 production workers. So one Ph.D. is responsible for 100 new jobs. So I think we're doing something economically useful. "I think I could work for industry, but my impression is that most industrial research problems are not approached in too rational a manner. I couldn't possibly do hack work. So I think that in industry I would wind up in management, since that's the only way you influence others with ideas. I think back to Henry Taube, with whom I did my postdoc work at Stanford. Taube's experiments with his hands were not as important as the acceptance of his ideas. "Today's rebellion is against structures that hardened years ago and aren't applicable anymore to today's conditions. I think today's turmoil tells us we're on the right track. People usually don't rebel against something they have no hope of changing.

For in the great interlocking system of corporations people live not by attending to the job, but by status, role playing, and tenure, and they work to maximize profits, prestige, or votes regardless of utility or even public disutility PAUL GOODMAN,

ing Up

"Grow-

Absurd"

The Peace Corps is one answer for those who want active participation. Corpsman Ken Walanski of Chicago is shown here in Liberia doing in-service teacher training in science

California's Big Sur country is home for the Esalen Institute that's exploring new reaches of human development—sensitivity training is one aspect of this exploration

Philip F. Wolf, 30, married, research chemist, Onion Carbide Corp., B.S., chemistry, New York Univ., Ph.D., organic chemistry, Columbia Unw. "It's difficult these days to get onto a good idea in basic chemistry that has commercial value. There are a lot of good ideas, of course, a lot that involve elegant chemistry, but usually they don't make economic sense. "My own research work is quite basic and lies outside any immediate industrial application. In such fundamental work, significant achievements come slowly and infrequently. The laboratory can be a lonely place—if there's a communications gap anywhere today, it's between men and molecules! Yet at the end of every day I feel I've learned some things that I didn't know earlier in the morning—and this keeps me really stimulated. To stay in a specialized field as an expert is probably not in the best interests of either the scientist or his company. The man's ideas become stagnant. His concepts become inbred. He becomes prejudiced toward those principles that allowed him to succeed as an expert. "I followed the outbreaks last year at Columbia University with special interest because I did my graduate work there. I remember particularly that the chemistry and engineering classes were about 80% attended during the riots . . . a fact which raises the question of whether or not these students are oblivious to the social issues around them. Well, I surely don't think they're indifferent. "Certainly, the sociology, political science, and history students are more committed to being involved with today's social problems. Their sensing of the times is more intense. They have more insights into the problems and their possible solutions. I can't help think, though, that these students are acting partly out of their own personal frustrations and uncertainties about their own career paths and job opportunities. "More than ever, professors are taking industrial consulting positions. I feel, however, that graduate students don't benefit that much more with such professors in getting to understand the industrial scene. My impression is that the professors visit their clients to present their academic viewpoints, perhaps pedagogically. They simply allow their brains to be picked, so to speak. Then they return to the university and their students without having really immersed themselves in the industrial point of view. "We all hear criticism that professors are exploiting graduate students by keeping them an extra year, to complete their own research projects. I don't believe this criticism is valid. Professors are reasonable in giving assignments to students that will improve their growth as well as contribute to their own projects. It's a fair shake. There are some students, though, who exploit professors by hanging around and working slowly in the comforts of the academic atmosphere." Career Opportunities

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Irving L. Bengelsdorf, 46, married, science writer, Los Angeles Times, B.S., chemistry, Univ. of III, M.S., organic chemistry, Univ. of III, Ph.D., organic chemistry, Univ. of Chicago m

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Aimison Jonnard, 51, married, senior long-range planner, Esso Chemical Co., B.S., chemical engineering, Kansas State Univ., M.S., chemical engineering, Columbia Univ., Ph.D., chemical engineering, Univ. of Pittsburgh

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C&EN MARCH 10, 1969

In 1963, while Irv Bengelsdorf was writing twice-weekly science columns for the Los Angeles Τ lines on a free-lance basis, he dropped in to see an editor on the Times to discuss how he was doing. To his surprise he was offered a full-time job as staffer. "It was like the sidewalk caved in when he offered me the job; I thought about it for three months. But I remembered what Otis Chandler, the publisher, told me. He said the public was becoming more literate and that they would be needing some way to keep up with a technical world. He said newspapers were going to have to take on more educative roles. That was exactly the way I felt and it clinched the decision. The change was rough at first. I didn't think I fit in. But I decided that it was one thing if they wanted to fire me because my writing wasn't adequate. But I wasn't going to quit just because I had a Ph.D. "I couldn't enjoy a job more. I feel I'm teaching science to the layman. It's so fascinating and challenging that I seldom have time to think about other things. I probably know more about more fields than working scientists, and sometimes I feel like a bee going from flower to flower as I go from lab to lab acquiring and exchanging knowledge. I'm often able to tell scientists new things about what's happening in fields related to theirs. "I don't care if the layman doesn't understand what

"Years ago, I used to force myself to read only what I had to about the chemical industry. Today, I read every­ thing I can find. It's a pleasure now because whatever I read relates to something else. It adds on. It fills in. "Sometimes I read an article that confirms what I had predicted . . . and that's rewarding. Sometimes I read a story that contradicts what I had thought, but usually I can figure out why I was wrong; that's rewarding too. "Knowing that I've built up what I feel is a good under­ standing of the chemical industry is a point of real satisfaction for me. Knowing also that I'm prepared to deal with some of the industry's problems is another. I suppose I measure myself in terms of what I've learned and know today . . . and I'm pleased with what my career has led to. "Many writers who are critics of industrial life, curiously enough, have never been involved with it. They've made themselves popular by selling a distorted picture of what's going on. For example, I just read Spencer Klaw's 'The New Brahmins' in which he describes one scientist who failed in academic research and so resigned himself to going to work for Du Pont. In another case, he talks about some hapless chemist who does nothing more in life than work on making a slightly better shampoo. "Well, my message is that there are many challenging things men are involved with in industry today. After all, chemical companies are spending as much as they are for R&D to develop ideas that they can commercially exploit. They're extremely anxious to get as many good ideas as they can from their investment. "Not only are managements receptive to these expensive

DNA, for example, really is. That isn't important. I do want him to know why it's important. Just because I have a Ph.D. doesn't mean anything with regard to knowing that much more. Science changes too fast. What the Ph.D. does do is demonstrate to scientists—my sources— that I've gone through the process of getting it. And it helps me evaluate the importance of a development. "Since I have joined the paper I've become more aware of people-oriented problems, such as overpopulation and the social impact of computers. The thing that bothers me about this whole business of balancing scientific progress against human welfare is that for science to make any progress, you need experts. But because they are experts they tend to defend the status quo. What I'd like to see someday is for all the TV networks to give up simultaneously one hour of prime time a month to present some issue related to science's social impact. "I don't think American society is putting its technically trained people to maximum use. Scientists have to have an interest in work other than what they d o interest in people. Thousands of scientists do not see beyond their immediate areas. They don't communicate with the people. As far as its relationship to society, chemistry offers fantastic opportunities because it deals with materials and directly impinges on everything. I

point this out to my classes in general science at UCLA and to my journalism students at USC. I'm about the only person ever to have a joint appointment to both places. I feel that chemistry can make a very great contribution to social problems. How many people realize that General Electric hires more chemists than most chemical companies? "Where chemistry has failed very early in the educational system is that children should be told what chemicals are and that they are not to be fooled around with. Teenagers are very self-conscious about their bodies. They panic over a very slight fever, rash, or upset. But they don't show any caution about drugs. We have failed to get our point across in pointing out the difference between medical treatment and drugs. "The nice thing about news work is that much time doesn't elapse before you know the house is collapsing. You get answers fast as to how you stand; you know how you're performing. There doesn't seem to be the administrative problems so common in the lab. You aren't kept in the dark about decisions that affect you. If there are budget problems, you're told right away what the story is. I find that I'm working harder in journalism than in the industrial research lab, and that the life of the journalist is more hectic than anything I ever knew."

research ideas, but also they're going to act fast to be somewhere before their competitors. Popular opinion has it, though, that corporations move inefficiently, that they delay in authorizing projects, that they stifle ambitious men. "In long-range planning the tough part of the work is this: Instead of having a defined set of problems to work on, you're out looking for new sets of problems that are part of any new business venture. You're often in the villain's role with management in advising them with a go or no-go decision that runs counter to what they might prefer to do. "A still unanswered question today, as I see things, is this: What steps is the chemical industry taking to avoid becoming a commodity business? Every year we've seen companies integrating ahead to consumers and back to raw materials. Now they're moving into new business lines. As this continues, men should be re-evaluating their career objectives in view of the changing nature of the chemical business. "Another related question is: Should an international chemical business be managed on a product basis or a regional basis? Today, half the chemical companies control things along product lines, the other half along regional lines. They keep changing their approach. As they do, so do some men's careers. "In industry, you get a lot of feedback about what your achievements mean in terms of profiting the company. To me, this means profiting yourself, the hundreds of people you work with, and those who buy your products. Abstractly, it's a sense of improving our standard of living—but it's something you can really feel." Career Opportunities

13 A

sionals. They insist on knowing about the social relevance of their skills/' But are the young—even the young professionals—seeking to do too much too thoughtlessly? Gene E. Bradley, General Electric's manager for international government relations, posed this question in his probe of the roots of student unrest. He found immense creative energy but found, too, that their efforts to devise programs for helping the poor were vague and illogical. His thoughts appeared in the July 1968 Harvard Business Review. "I wondered, for instance, if they had ideas for providing massive education; developing management skills; electrifying the Mekong Delta; applying technology to problems at the hamlet level; and creating the matrix of roads, communication, and all the other facilities of a decent infrastructure. And could action be geared somehow to self-help rather than paternalism." The answer, in Bradley's experience, was negative. Perhaps the New Left in its negativity doesn't have the organization and the know-how. Hordes of other young people, though, possessing the same ideals as their vocal brethren, do. There's still much that is sturdy, square, and practical about this country's youth. The Peace Corps, in its silent geographically remote style, is building a "can do" infra-conviction in the developing countries. Young roughnecks are being refashioned into community leaders in the largely industryrun Job Corps camps. Thousands of young technically trained people are planning careers of relevance in environmental control. Perhaps most important of all, communities are taking total assessments of their wasteful and outmoded political structures, and are forming metropolitan units of government. None of this sounds scientifically and technologically related. There are connections, though. The young are protesting the system, and the system is actually changing, although in a maddeningly lumbering way. It 14 A C&EN MARCH 10, 1969

Freeport Kaolin Co. research group, left to right, Horton Morris, Fred Gunn, James Olivier, Lamar Brooks, and Paul Sennett

Research group: Lamar E. Brooks, 31, supervisor-applications research; Fred A. Gunn, 50, vice president and general manager; Horton H. Morris, 46, vice presidentRùD; James P. Olivier, 36, assistant research director; Paul S. Sennett, 36, research chemist; Freeport Kaolin Co. Morris: "If you're in a hurry to see results from your research work, industry's the place to be involved. I left the academic life for one basic reason: I get more satisfaction in doing some new thing and seeing it put to use." Olivier: "In basic research, I savor those rare moments of real insight when I might come upon some fact, some relationship, that others don't yet know about. Basic research, though, isn't isolated. It's part of a closed circle with applied research, development, engineering, production, and marketing." Gunn: "I agree with that. I think too many research scientists are riding white horses . . . seeking status . . . competing for professional acclaim only." Morris: "There's a strong demand for university professors with industrial experience who can give students a good perspective of the chemical industry." Sennett: "I think the universities should demand that the professors have industrial contact in some way, especially since the professors are so influential in shaping a student's attitudes." Olivier: "Usually, though, the professors who hold consulting positions, say, are teaching the graduate students rather than the undergraduates. This practice makes sense because the undergraduates are too busy learning the ABC's of science to fully grasp the professor's insight to industry." Morris: "We wrestled with the idea of locating our research labs away from the plant site nearer to the large universities in the New York area or in North Carolina's Research Triangle. The reason we stayed here in Gordon, Ga., was to keep the close contact we have with everyone at the plant." Brooks: "Working here in the middle of Georgia, I don't feel any professional handicaps as a chemist. I get more than enough research ideas from my associates here, from society meetings, and from customer laboratories." Olivier: "The location of a research lab isn't critical to a person's keeping informed. You read the literature. You know the people in your field." Gunn: "I wouldn't have the research lab anywhere else. I need the research men at the plant. Without them, we'd be dead in the kaolin business."

Charles Weiss, 31, single, postdoctoral student, laboratory of chemical biodynamics, Univ. of Calif., Berkeley; B.A., chemistry and physics, Harvard Univ.; Ph.D., chemical physics and biochemistry, Harvard Univ.

Brooks: "Often, too much research time is spent in developing information to convince management that an idea will make money." Morris: "A research director is in a sensitive liaison position with management. In many companies, his research costs are held as liabilities against corporate profits." Brooks: "It's sometimes a long bridge between the research idea and actual production." Sennett: "Everyone involved in a development project from research to marketing has to work together . . . and not say some other department failed at some point." Morris: "To pass off mistakes is certainly a tendency in larger corporations. But departmental friction can be minimized more easily in smaller companies." Olivier: "An advantage I find in the small company is having a free, relaxed communication among those in different groups. This gives me a feeling of involvement in the operation as a whole." Morris: "I consider our coffee breaks almost essential— they give everyone the chance to hear about what's going on." Brooks: "As in baseball, you can play all positions in a small company. You can relate to many facets of research, development, production, and sales . . . and come back full circle. I often come to work in the morning not knowing which hat I'll be wearing that day. But you have to be self-sufficient. . . self-generating." Sennett: "In a small company, I feel the satisfaction of being listened to. I like the chance to prove myself right. Sometimes, though, I prove myself wrong . . . and it's a little embarrassing to have your mistakes so well known." Gunn: "I see no real difference between working in small or large companies. I've worked in both kinds of companies and I've found that self-fulfillment comes from within the individual. Too many people blame their personal failures on their environment."

"I know my scientific and social interests don't mix, but I've still seen little relevance in job opportunities offered the people on my level. I prefer to do basic research [Weiss' studies are on the first photochemical event in photosynthesis] but would like to have a job where my talents are put to some social purpose. I mentioned that goal in my industrial job applications, but it might as well have been written in hieroglyphics. They had no idea what I was saying. What I really want is for industry to take overviews of such problems as pollution, ghetto education, underdeveloped countries and ask 'What's the best way we can make a contribution?' They may make a buck doing it, but even if they don't, they should look past the balance sheet once in a while. "The most attractive career for me would be one where I could combine being a professor and being on call to Government. I think the bloom is off that rose, but it's still what I have in the back of my mind. There are disadvantages in that this type of scientist, I think, has lost touch with the people who feel out of it. I think it's a serious question that when you've made it, how do you keep in touch with where the problems are—or how do the problems keep in touch with you. [Weiss has tutored children in the Oakland ghetto and has written some articles on East and West African science based on his experiences there.] I don't think I could do industrial research as I know it because—well—who needs another fiber? I want to do something no one else is going to do. Studying the minutiae of pollution doesn't interest me. I guess if I were to start fresh my field it would be urban planning. "I have thought in terms of management, too, because to do the sort of things I want to do involves management. I helped manage Eugene McCarthy's campaign in this area, but in managing people in the course of making a living I have no experience at all. But I suppose I could learn. "Until I came to Berkeley, I didn't think many of my fellow postdocs shared my views. By and large the scientific student is an inert type. As long as you're doing your work nobody bothers you. It's the ideal environment for people who don't want to get involved with things. In Berkeley, though, there are many outstanding exceptions—scientists who are very politically conscious. "My big objection to academic research has to do with those schools that want to hire Nobel Prize winners immediately. They want spectacular results right after they hire you. One university told me it would expect outstanding results within a year or two—and this one isn't considered among the top in biochemistry. I said this would be tough if I were on a long-range project, but they said, 'We want comers. Your attitude belongs to a more gentlemanly era that's gone.' That's a damn brutal way of living, and their systematic discourtesy of not answering letters doesn't help. If they don't want you, you're treated like a lump of dirt. "But in big-time research, which I want to do, the rewards are quite great. The camaraderie is unsurpassed. Age is no barrier. It's an entry for anything else you want to do. I like it because it's first class. But I don't know how tough it'll be to get there." Career Opportunities

15A

Arthur C. Shaw, 27, married, manager of recruiting, Dow Chemical Co., B.S., business administration, Univ. of Fla., M.B.A., management and industrial relations, Univ. of Fla. may be becoming possible that in a period when we're out to reconstruct natural, human, and man-made resources, the young technically trained person can devise clearer notions of his goals and enter a system that is learning how to respond. Mr. Bradley believes that change is occurring within his company, General Electric. Members of the NewLeft may not be applying for jobs at GE, but young people with New Left ideas certainly are. According to him, GE must change, or risk withering—as is surely true of other companies. There's one additional point about this changing system of ours that might be worth mentioning: The intertwining of industry with government, and of academics with government. Ideas are flowing back and forth across these permeable borders and, despite the obvious dangers of mixing our institutions, it might be possible to make new approaches at developing sensible technological goals. It's too early to tell. Movements in Congress pushed by Sen. Edmund Muskie and Rep. Emilio Daddario to establish commissions that would investigate the relevance of our technological goals might be considered omens. Another omen, perhaps, is the decision of medical societies to look into the ethics of heart transplants. During the dying days of the Johnson Administration, Dr. Nicholas Golovan of the President's Office of Science and Technology, in a speech reported in the Neiv York Times, urged formation of an "evaluative branch of government." The many interrelated problems that technology is injecting into America's social fabric, he said, are so complex that they are going unperceived, unfaced, and unsolved. "No one ever evaluates a federal pro16A

C&EN MARCH 10, 1969

"Obviously I'm not an old-timer, but I've aged a lot during the past five years. [Shaw was on the recruiting firing line during the napalm demonstrations.] This has given me perspective. Today I'm more concerned about society in general and where the world is going. I'm not just concerned about where I can make a mark personally but in what direction the total system is heading. On the campus I don't think there's been as significant a change of this type among technical people as with those in the liberal arts. Students I interview ask me where they fit in the company and what things the company is doing in general. They rarely ask what the company is doing to make the country a better place to live in. In three years of interviewing I can't remember more than half a dozen instances of being asked such a question. The typical chemist, even the undergraduate, is interested only in research. His whole world is research, and he wants to find the most meaningful outlet. Unfortunately, he thinks he'll be doing big-time research almost instantly. "I think too many people come off the campus thinking nothing has meaning unless it's research. Part of the problem is that these students are basking in the sunlight of the academic world, which is all textbook, all theory, all experimentation. Engineers are more realistic, partially because many have had at least a summer working in industry. So they know what some of the problems are. "We find that the less successful people are weak in interpersonal skills. One of the very important things Dow asks is the ability of a candidate to work with others—even the man in the research lab. We find that the candidates with summer experience are better at this. They're better able to chart their own course, just because they're better informed. My problem in an interview of only 25 minutes is to make the situation as unartificial as possible. I try to find out what the candidate wants to do, how he sees himself. I can learn a lot from his previous experiences as to how he's going to interact. In the field of personnel selection, there is currently a mad scramble to identify predictors for success. The recruiter has to do two jobs: select promising employees and make a favorable impression. I think it's important to impress the candidate physically by not being unattractive, being able to understand the student in general, being able to show that the company will meet his demands—demands that today are tough because the students want the opportunity to be the best they can possibly be.

"All the napalm demonstration situations I was in were awkward. At two or three schools I felt the mob was teetering on the brink. There were cases when I'd hear shouts of 'Let's get the Dow recruiter!' and I would have to be escorted by college officials or police off the campus. However, I never was physically assaulted. At the ma­ jority of campuses I felt the demonstrating students were genuinely concerned without bordering on violence. What a lot of people don't understand is that this napalm con­ flict hasn't really made a profound change in the way Dow operates from within. It has caused a great deal of soul searching, in some cases for the first time, but has not al­ tered the manner in which we make business decisions. "In my personal philosophy I'm a great believer in doing what's good for yourself. I'm not concerned too much with losing contact with my family through ambition. If on your way to corporate success you make some per-

sonal sacrifices—through a psychological need to work that way—then you may be helping your family in the long run. When I came off the Florida campus I didn't want any kind of traveling job. I saw myself as the pro­ verbial traveling salesman, gone constantly. Now I just love what I'm doing, getting paid for seeing the country and to meet interesting people. When I get home from these trips I'm the happiest guy in the world. "One of the most fascinating books I've recently read was 'Tinker Belle,' Robert Manry's account of his solitary crossing of the Atlantic. It was a brutal exercise for a man, who is a social animal. I read Look and Life and Playboy and, of course, the journals that relate to my job. I think Playboy is relevant to today's situation because levity is needed as a break in the enforced seriousness and drama of life. I like to be entertained because I get enough messages in the course of my job."

George W. Hedden, 58, plant manager, American C y anamid Co., studied chemistry, Central Univ. of Iowa

"I believe that the essence of managing is influencing people. Sometimes this means using strong directives; sometimes it means using subtle persuasion. "In either case, for a man to be an effective manager he must be able to communicate—he must be able to speak articulately and to write coherently. These skills are the most essential ones he can have in presenting himself to sell a product, an idea, or a program. "To be sure, these skills are reflections of his student achievements in language courses and debating groups. More important, though, they're reflections of his ability to think clearly. From what I've seen of others' progress in their companies, I believe that what a man says and writes, to a great degree, determines his future. "Today, the more ambitious men fresh from science and engineering schools are demanding to hold highly responsi­ ble positions. They're expecting to receive frequent pro­ motions. They're planning carefully to get the wide range of experience in different operating departments that's necessary to move ahead into the executive suite. These are the men who will succeed wherever they work. And the management of every company knows that if it doesn't provide the advancement opportunities, another company will. "The industrial environment provides chemists and engineers with a feedback by which they can measure their performance and evaluate themselves. That feed­ back is learning what their contribution means within the whole economics of a research, production, or marketing effort. Having cost information is our life blood. Today in industry everyone has full working access to that infor­ mation. On the other hand, years ago men in the research, production, and marketing groups built walls between themselves and kept cost information confidential. That practice, of course, prevented men from gaining a full sense of what their contributions really meant."

"I'd like to first talk about career satisfaction over the long run. As a man advances with his company, he often becomes involved with activities that are somewhat periph­ eral to his company's business. For example, plant man­ agers become identified with community leaders and com­ pany presidents associate with international figures. I believe this kind of broad involvement can be very reward­ ing, professionally and personally. "As plant manager, I've come to enjoy a certain level of prestige and recognition among the local political and social leaders. They often approach me as the company spokesman for my ideas and advice on Boy Scout activ­ ities, fund raising, hospital planning, and so forth. And I'm pleased they do approach me. What's so deeply satisfying about my relationship with these leaders is that they do value my thoughts and judgment. "Within the company operations, being plant manager gives me the relative freedom an entrepreneur has to manage, and I can do this without the risk of my own capital but, of course, at the risk of my job.

ο Γ!

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Career Opportunities

17A

David B. Hertz, 50, married, director, McKinsey ir Co., Inc., B.S., industrial and chemical engineering, Columbia Univ., Ph.D., philosophy, Columbia Univ.

gram or an act of Congress now," he said. "The evaluative branch would determine in detail how these programs actually affected the course of events, in real time, while adjustive action could still be taken." So perhaps this is another sign that protest isn't confined to the young, but characterizes the youthful elderly, as well. Everyone is in a restless and questioning mood, sizing himself up against the market and against demand for his skills. People are wondering whether they're in the right job. The string of success, for too many, runs out too soon. That may be why John Gardner, in his book, "Self Renewal," recommends three careers within a lifetime, each building upon the experience of the previous stint. At one time the world and the careers in it were crystal, set in stasis by an Aristotelian fashion of categorizing. Now we're flexible, in the process of becoming, moving toward a kind of "parousia" rhapsodized by Teilhard de Chardin in "The Phenomenon of Man." "Plastics!" was the boorish career advice given to undirected Benjamin in the movie, "The Graduate." But Benjamin wasn't looking as much for a career (in sales or production) as he was for a style. Change plastics to "plasticity" or "spontaneity" and a style begins to emerge, the style looked upon as essential by the young.

18 A C&EN MARCH 10, 1969

"I regard my life and career somewhat as a scientific experiment—I never knew at the outset what data I'd obtain to be able to plan ahead with certainty. New data are continually suggesting new opportunities and new problems and upsetting any grand designs I may have conceived. "I've never set any standards of success for myself in terms of end results, such as salary or position. This has always struck me as foolish and frustrating. Instead, I've always immersed myself in what was at hand. In doing so, I've discovered things—surprising, interesting, and useful things—that often led to doing something else. "In the various industrial and academic positions I've held, I've always been confronted with challenging problems within those environments . . . for a while. I sometimes found that after working through certain problems, I was confronted with no new ones. Then, as I saw it, it was my environment rather than my problem-solving abilities that had failed the test. "Solving problems is the nature of research and development, as is the nature of marketing, consulting, and simply living, if you will. The deep satisfaction I find in solving problems comes from proving myself in the test. "I've been consulting at McKinsey seven years now. That's more time than I've spent in any other position . . . and it's been the happiest time. I enjoy the continual flow of challenging problems and ideas. The most rewarding aspect of consulting is that it gives me the opportunity to choose what I want to think about. "It gives me a unique kind of intellectual freedom that I've found nowhere else—a freedom that no company president or college dean I know of can honestly claim to have. A company president must devote most of his time and energy to a narrow set of problems specific to his firm's business. A dean must tie himself to administering proposals for more federal grant money, recruiting better faculty, and other university goals. "In one sense, though, the intellectual freedom of consulting isn't absolute. That is, one's ideas are ultimately always appraised on a cost-benefit basis. You have to earn your intellectual freedom by consistently coming up with ideas that are profitable for your clients. I'm constantly aware of this pressure to perform. I can't say I always enjoy it, but I'm sure life would be less interesting if I were free of it."

Cornelius J. Pings, 39, married professor of chemical engineering, Caltech; B.S., applied chemistry, Caltech; Ph.D., chemical engineering, chemistry, mathematics, Caltech "When I was at Stanford in 1955 starting my first faculty job, I said to myself, Ό Κ , Pings, what are you going to do next?' I had been struck by the inelegance of the way liq­ uids were being studied and I said, Ό Κ , I'll take liquids to work on for the next 10 years and see what I can do with them.' Now it's been 14 years since I said that and we're really only getting started." Pings has 15 people working for him in his liquid state physics laboratory. To him, a breakthrough in the field may come when he solves the intermolecular forces of the liquid state. "Figuring out those forces should open up new worlds. I don't know what the implications are. But I do know that if we can understand the structure of water with re­ spect to the membrane, for example, some important problems in biology might reveal themselves." Pings is currently helping solve some educational prob­ lems peculiar to Caltech and some urban problems not peculiar only to Pasadena. He is chairman of a committee on the aims and goals of Caltech. Should it diversify more broadly into the behavioral and social sciences, and the humanities? Should new departments be added? "My feelings are that we've got to be involved if only for our own self-interest. We can't stand aside from the environmental decay around us. But how well we adapt depends on how we change—and that means, in turn, that we've got to stop some of the things we're doing. Our society is good at starting things but quite sluggish about stopping them. And that is a problem not faced at univer­ sities. I think industry might be better at doing this. "I don't want to see Pasadena decay as a city. In December I was named to a committee whose goal is to identify blighted areas and launch programs to rebuild them. I think that if we don't do this, Pasadena is going to be choked off. There is no getting away from the fact that Pasadena is a partially black community. W e can't continue to bury our heads in the sand. I see this as an

important thing to do for the sake of Caltech. I guess about half the faculty feels the way I do about the outside responsibilities of academic people—whether their interests are in race relations, the schools, smog, or transportation. There are also some who say the school is doing its job by doing what it knows best, and that not a dime should be spent by us on social problems. "Would I enjoy working in industry? If I could be plugged in near the top where the action is, or if I could freely run a lab with 12 people working on liquid state physics, yes I would. But I really am committed to this university and the university system. Sure, I could see myself as a dean or as president because someone has got to represent the academic issues to the public and Con­ gress, and someone must guide the universities and keep them in the mainstream. "I do feel the competitive pressures of big-time research. I feel I've got to keep producing, but only a small part of this pressure comes from Caltech, the institution. I know that if I did nothing I wouldn't survive. I like to think I'm on the frontier edge of the area in which I'm doing work. I know I've got to run fast to keep ahead. It's a personal concern of mine that I might flop. I don't feel that I've succeeded but I feel on the verge of doing something signif­ icant. I hope it pans out because Caltech and the Air Force (via research support) have invested a lot of money in me. "I feel fortunate to be in the academic life—where your esteem is measured by how your peers regard you, not by the money you make. "The encouraging thing I see in students today is that they are asking the simple question, 'Why?' It's amazing how many areas that question opens. Why more tech­ nology? Has it made us any happier? Collectively I don't think we are. I'm not concerned about myself in that regard. I work a 50-hour week. I don't know what I would do if I were told science is advancing too fast and that I could only come in 24 hours a week. But I can see that at some point it might be an embarrassment that we are putting out so much knowledge. I think we should be thinking about controlling technological progress."

Career Opportunities

19 A

Middle-aged p e o p l e think they can d o anything, b u t t h e t r u t h is t h a t middle-aged p e o p l e can't do most things as well as they used to EDWARD A L B E E ,

American

The

Dream

Benjamin arrives at his style in his madcap race toward the church to head off the final vows and rescue his lover from a marriage doomed to cocktail parties, split levels, and swimming pools. The movie ends at that point, with no hint of where the bus is taking them, where they're ultimately headed, or what sort of career or life Benjamin will settle into. To an older generation, that is the distressing part of the picture. Some current research may give a bit of hope to those Benjamins of today who seek to merge style with substantive motivation. According to Dr. George A. Miller, professor of psychology at Harvard, work is under way to upgrade the motivation of students through a device called "need achievement," that is, instilling in young people a desire for success. He says attempts are being made to teach people to think like solid achievers, by learning the opinions and behavior patterns that characterize the successful person. If the technique is worth applying, imagine waves of "successful" graduates descending on the nation's labs, production lines, and managerial desks. What if they do succeed? Will their superiors stand the strain of excessive ability and energy at the bottom? Are companies preparing for this onslaught of competent young people seeking participation? They have been warned by such persons as Gene Bradley and John Gardner. In "Self Renewal," psychologist Gardner cautions organizations against rigidity.

20 A C&EN MARCH 10, 1969

Lilia Ann Abron, 24, single, graduate student, environmental engineering, Univ. of Mass.; B.S., chemistry, Lemoyne College; M.S., sanitary engineering, Washington Univ. "I want a job that keeps me from getting bored; one that's interesting and exciting. Not a nine-to-five job, but a job that would allow me to travel, one where I would work with people who really know what they are doing, so I could learn things from them. It seems that the majority of people I have worked with in the past were stale, and that sort of frightens me because I don't want it to happen to me. I don't want to spend the day looking at the clock. Preferably I would want to work for a consulting sanitary engineering firm and run treatability and feasibility studies. My big professional hobby is to learn to work as many instruments as possible. "I was lucky in my upbringing. Both my parents were educated as teachers. Mom and Dad always provided for us. My mother's favorite remark to us is something I'll always remember: 'You're going to have all that you need.' I was 11 before I even heard of Jim Crow. I remember going to concerts in Memphis with my mother and climbing many flights of stairs. I never really thought it an odd practice. Today I guess I could be classed as a militant. But I believe in the goodness of man. I'm not terribly optimistic about harmony between the races, but I'm hopeful. "The other engineers and I don't much see eye to eye. They're usually Republican and conservative. I'm Democratic and liberal. [Lilia has done political campaign work as a precinct volunteer.] One day all of us were sitting around during the New York teachers strike, and I was saying that teachers have a right to strike, since they are paid less than they're worth. The others said teachers, like any other commodity, are subject to supply and demand; they were worth only what the demand was. I said that my parents, between them, were making only

Peter VanWyck, 63, married, director of research, cules, Inc., B.S., organic chemistry, Cooper Union, and Ph.D., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

twelve or thirteen thousand dollars a year. They said my parents didn't have to go into teaching. My answer was, 'What else was there for an educated black man to do?' "Then there's this welfare thing. I admit there are people who mess up welfare. But it's not the child's fault he's here. There's abuse in all kinds of programs. "I think America is a sick society. She's too capitalistic. People in it are too self-centered, worrying about themselves more than anyone else, and how much they can make and earn. I hate to think how America is going to react if one day she discovers she is second best. The U.S. hasn't the slightest idea where she wants to go. I can't see how we can put so much money in Vietnam when there are people starving at home. Fellowship support is going down this year to $200 a month. The government can no longer afford to send people to school because of that war. "I don't dislike this country—I wouldn't live anywhere else. I think there's hope for the United States. I'm one of those 'stupid' people who believe we're going to make it. I feel this generation of people around me will begin the process of change. People are going to have to live together. I only ask that if there is prejudice, don't let it be on the basis of color. [Lilia herself has experienced little job discrimination, but has had extreme difficulty finding places to live in Chicago, Kansas City and, now, Amherst, Mass.] I believe if there are good salaries to be had I should be able to get them as well as anybody else. "Would I work for industry? Yes. I would like to, if I didn't have to work a given number of hours, if I would be working for men well known in their fields. In industry you have to produce and I would like that challenge. The only thing that worries me is how much cheating goes on in industry; how many of your ideas are stolen. I might talk against capitalism—because for the sake of money ethical compromises are made—but I realize we can't get out of it. All I ask is that black people share fully in its advantages."

HerM.S.

"Many scientists still hang onto the notion that 'pure' research is, in some way, superior to 'applied' research. They think in terms of one versus the other—in terms of measurable differences between the two. And why not? After all, the National Science Foundation perpetuates these differences by collecting and publishing data on how much industry spends in each area. "Well, as I look at it, the term 'pure' research is rather antiquated. It seems to have evolved a couple generations ago among the university professors. They labeled their own research 'pure' to distinguish it from the kind of research which they liked to think their students were prostituting themselves to by entering industry. But times have changed and so has science. I think there's a better interplay today between academia and industry. These closer associations are developing, largely, by the swelling of industry's ranks with many fine scientists, who are well trained by these same professors in the scientific method. To me the important point to be made is that industry is using the scientific method in its research regardless of how the research is defined. And isn't that what the game really is all about? "In recruiting research people I'm looking for men who don't have their ideas entirely fixed, who aren't mentally s trait-jacketed. I think they should have goals in mind, but they should be flexible enough to realize that their goals may well change and, perhaps, keep changing—all for the better, too. "We've often found our research men's skills developing into areas they hadn't even thought of earlier. I don't think in my first 25 years at Hercules I ever achieved what I initially thought I was aiming for. But the goals I did achieve were far more significant and worthwhile. "Perhaps this will illustrate my point. When I was directing the research center, someone asked me how I could be content having had the same job for 12 years. I told him that if he thought the job was the same as it had been during any of the past 12 years, he was kidding himself. Some people think you have to change job titles to have different jobs, but a man can make his job different every day if he earnestly wants to. All he has to do is form a concept of what the job should be and work toward it. He might be surprised how few obstacles exist outside of those within himself. "One question I often put to myself in my own work is : 'What for?' Finding a good answer requires a good deal of critical self-analysis. A young research man might ask himself the same question in two parts: 'Why is what I want to do best for me? Why is it best for my company?' By coming to understand his own needs and relating them to those of his company, a man can approach his work with an attitude that's certain to lead to satisfaction."

Career Opportunities

21A

Harold D. Medley, 41, married, vice president-sales, Celanese Chemical Co., B.S., chemistry, Southwestern Univ., Ph.D., organic chemistry, Univ. of Texas

' O n e consequence of the proliferation of rules, customs, and procedures is the bottling up of energy, or more accurately, the channeling of energy into all the tiny rivulets of conformity," he says. "The long process of mastering the rules smothers energy and destroys all zest, spontaneity, and creativity." Again, one can see reasons for the preference of young people for small, flexible organizations. For some reason, perhaps in anticipation of enhanced lower level talent, or in response to their own search for relevance, executives are seeking to "relate" to their subordinates in efforts to communicate directly. This is the reason for the high popularity of sensitivity training ("T Sessions" is one name for the process). The National Training Laboratory in Washington, D.C., runs a program for company presidents. A new group is assembled every three months, and for about five days they hammer away at each other's interpersonal defects. In the process they strip bare their psychological problems and emerge relieved at having shed such excess baggage. Sensitivity training may be a fad. Many psychotherapists think it's too shallow, that nothing can substitute for the one-to-one process between patient and therapist to achieve better self-awareness. The point is, however, that high management is seeking to do its job better and more openly. So the search goes, at all levels of life. Managers of this country's private and public institutions are viewing the frothy tide of young candidates eager for participation. Learning today is swdft. Competence comes quickly. Experience, because of mobility and the electronic media, is even swifter. Wisdom to use this learning, competence, and experience in a constructive fashion may come more slowly, however. We're just now learning to assimilate a style in which doing your thing, but doing it well, is the message. 22 A

C&EN MARCH 10, 1969

"When I started out in the research department I had every intention of working my way to the top there. After seven years, though, I moved into commercial development and more recently into sales. If I could go back in time, I'd make the same moves again. "I think the time span in realizing some satisfaction in marketing and sales work is much shorter than it is in a research and development project. I regard myself as a gregarious person and enjoy associating with others. I like the challenge of competitors. Negotiating major contracts, for example, is like playing in a giant card game: When you win, you know it. "I guess we all know chemists who are uptight about being properly identified with a certain area of chemistry. They tirelessly insist on delineating one area from another— physical chemistry from chemical physics, macromolecular chemistry from biology, and so on. Well, no system—the human body or a Saturn rocket—functions on the basis of any one isolated chemical discipline. Those chemists should drop their arguments with one another and regard their work as part of the whole. There's an analogy to this: If the railroad people considered themselves in the transportation business years ago, they wouldn't have the competitive troubles they do today. "Most company managers would like their young scientists and engineers to gain broad experience early in their careers in the various operating departments—assuming the young men choose this route. This often means, of course, that the man has to reorient himself and possibly relocate his family. Well, not every man, or his wife, aspires to the advantages of this broad experience . . . even though he agrees it would probably enhance his career opportunities. I've felt less pressure from young men to move around within Celanese than I have from myself to suggest they move. "Today, in my opinion the supply-demand situation for Ph.D.'s has artificially inflated salaries to a point where I'm really beginning to question whether they're worth that much. It surely doesn't help the graduate student when he approaches me with the attitude that industry owes him a living rather than the opportunity to earn one. "The strictly academic professors are partly responsible for influencing students to share what may be their own negative attitudes toward industrial research. Perhaps the students feel they're selling out by joining industry and that the price better be right. I believe that if more professors had industrial experience, perhaps as consultants, we would see a general improvement in student attitudes."