provocative opinion Graduate Education in Chemistry More and More about Less and Less? A. Truman Schwartz Macalester College, Saint Paul, M N 55105 Chemistry graduate programs in American universities have become spectacularly successful a t producing PhD's who know more and more about less and less. The consequences of this tyranny of overspecialization can be detrimental to the health of our discipline. I was led to this realization and its pessimistic conclusion by three recent events: an invitation to present a naver a t the Division of Chemical ~ d u c a t i o n ~ w a r~i s. p p o s k aht the ACS National Meeting in the spring of 19931ajbb search for someone to fill a tenuretrack faculty position a t mv home institution, and the experience of oneo? my best students who was being courted by eraduate schools. The thread connediw - these seemindv - - disparate elements is not obvious, but it is instructive and, I think, it illuminates the problem. The invitation was to honor George &&an, the 1993 recipient of the George Pimentel Award in Chemical Education. &&anis a modem Renaissance man, with over 1000 publications-books, chapters, papers, and reviews-to his credit. Thev cover an amazim - ranee: - oripinal laboraton, investigationi of mrdination compounds, &holarly studies in the history of chemistry, papers describing new undergraduate experiments and chemical demonstrations, and much more. &orge2s catholic interests make him a mra auis among chemists, and I am not advocating a n educational system designed to produce only birds of his multicolored plumage. But it did strike me, while working on my symposium paper, that many young PhD chemists are disturbingly narrow in both their nonchemical and chemical interests. Mv chief evidence for this assertion comes from a search for someone to teach and practice instrumental methods and modern ohvsical chennstrv ar Macalester Collcm. Our search continued over two years,"and we had approximately 240 applicants. The range of individuals, graduate institutions, and quality was broad, but many of the curricula uitae were quite i;npre&lve. It was not un&mmnn u~ cncounwr fresh ~ h D ' s with four,. five,. or six publications based on their disiertntions and two or three more in preparation fmm their posbdodoral exoerience. The eraduate transcri~tsof the m a t maioritv " .of the candidates were less impressive, in spite of the preponderance of A's (apparently the current average grade). The amount of course work infrequently extended much beyond one year, and it seldom ventured far beyond the narrow con~hysical fines of the subdiscipline. It was unusual to find a . chenust who had taken a course in nr@mic or inorganic, or an analvtical chemist who had ventured into . ~hvsical chemistry-to say nothing of physics or mathematics. The required graduate minor has apparently gone the way of the language requirement. And the greater the reputation of the PhDgranting institution, the smaller the quantity of formal course work that seems to be expected for the degree.
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Based on a paper presented at the American Chemical Society National Meeting. Denver. Colorado. April 1993.
All of this was confirmed by my student, when he returned from being wooed by a half dozen of the most prestigious chemistry graduate programs in the country. The winner of two major national fellowships, this young man had his choice of institutions. He informed me that one requires six courses for a doctorate, another only four. I t ;eems a s though minimal formal requirements-have hecome a selling for a department. One of the depart-point . ments has no comprehensive examinations, no cumulative examinations, no research proposals, and no orals other than the thesis defense. At this same university, graduate students do not even have graduate committees. They are expected to ioin a research erouo some time d u r i n ~their first semester, but it is really preferable to arrive the summer before formal matriculation and eet started in some professor's laboratory Thus, individual faculty members become recruiters for their own research groups, and only incidentally for the university. This early specialization has not shortened the time to a PhD; it is, in fad, getting longer. The graduate student's primary function seems to be the advancement of the mentor's research program. And when the new doctors finally emerge they are often ipnorant experts. I submit that this trend has pot&ially dangerous consequences for the students who seek careers in chemistly, for the institutions that employ them, and for the quality of scientific research. The system is bad for graduate students, because it is el* ist in the worst sense ofthat much maligned word. The entire science- education establishment, from grade school through graduate school, seems to be designed to produce a faculty for Harvard University. Those who do not make it to Cambridge o h n are ill served. To be sure, a handful of the truly eifted and dedicated, like my student, need a minimum of formal instruction. You simply point them in the right direction and get out of the way They will learn on their own and from each other. Their inquiring minds will transcend the narrowness of their graduate instruction. Their research experience will make them experts, and their own inquisitiveness will make them generalists, in spite of the pressures to focus narrowly And, if my student is lucky as well a s able, he may, indeed, become a professor a t one of the universities that commands the bucks and the brightest. But the maioritv eraduate students. and I dare sav " . of ., the majonty of practmng chem~sts,do not have such glfta Most ~ e o o l econ profit from formal educat~on.Ifthat were not trie,'this ~ L u r n a would l have no reason to exist. Although the undergraduate curriculum is becoming more and more packed with information, knowledge is growing even more rapidly. Much remains to be learned after the bachelor's d e b e e : ~ n rof the &vents t r e n n h i ol'the Amencan I'hl), compared tu British and Eumpeim doctorates, has been the provision of graduate courses to supplement undergraduate instruction while deepening and broadening understanding. Comprehensive or cumulative exami-
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Number 8 August 1994
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nations provide useful indicators of progress and stimuli for review and synthesis. But if such time-tested peda~o!zical . . . strategies are scrapped a s wannabe institutions ape the, dite few, their less ablestudents will mevitably suffer.Afew years ago I was told about a thesis defense in a n ambitious but not yet amved state university. The graduate student had done his research on infrared spectroscopy. One of his examiners asked how selection rules differ for IR and Raman-active transitions. It turned out, to everyone's embarrassment and consternation, that the student not only did not know the answer, he had no notion of the phenomenon behind Raman spectroscopy. Much of graduate education is apprenticeship, a time-honored method of instruction and a verv effective one. At best, a research group is a recreation of a medieval gu~ld.with the bachelors learninafrom the master. Hut what ifthe mnsrer is too busy w%tingpapcrsor propo;als to spend much rime with the bachelors'' When theiob of'supenisinp.graduate students is given over to postdoct&al fellows, thereis a t least a suggestion that the very legitimate goal of h d i n g new knowledge is squeezing out that other essential aim-ducation. What is left is training and little else. There is another. sociallv insidious dimension to earlv and excessive specialization. It runs the risk of excluding iust those underre~resentedindividuals that we should be &acting to chemistry. Many of these students are underprepared-academically, personally, or socially-to enter a research group immediately on receipt of a BA or BS. And a sink-or-swim environment is hardly nurturing. Inadequate graduate course work is a n invitation to failure, if not in graduate school (where it may be difficult to "wash out" because bodies are needed to teach laboratory and recitation sections), then on the job. I say "on the job" because I believe that most chemists in most careers are still expected to be generalists, a t least to some extent. The places where one can thrive bv continuing to learn moreand more about less and less are few. In the liberal arts college where I work, I do not have the luxury of refusing to tiach quantum mechanics because mv thesis was on thermodynamics. How can a recent PhD who knows and cares on?; about the vibrational states of NO2 or the svnthesis of cobalt I1 complexes ever hope to do a n adequatejob teaching general chemistry? Our search a t Macalester ended well. We hired a young chemist with a doctorate from a graduate department that ranks a t or near the top in all surveys. He has succeeded in a highDressure research environment and has the ootential to continue to do well in one. Clearly, those qualifications h e l ~ e dhis cause. But eauallv i m ~ o r t a nto t me and mv collibleagues were his broad'inte"rests, his commitment eral arts education, and the fact that he is a product of a liberal arts college. He is also smart, and willing and able to learn. He will compensate for anv inadequacies in his formal graduate education. But aga&, he is the exception and not the rule amonp. - recent PhD's. I suspect that the needs of industry are not all that different from those of a liberal arts college. Thirty years ago, when I worked a s a n industrial chemist. com~anieswere hiring people on the basis of their graduate records, research accom~lishments.and ~rofessional~ r o m i s e .But industry also prized versatllity,'flexlbillty, a ;.illlngness to take intellectual risks and attack the rom~licatedsvstems of the real world. My former colleagues wLo stayed in the corporate sector have shifted their areas of specialization a s the company's interests changed. Even those who have remained in research have not spent their careers doing the same thing that earned them their doctorates. And many have ventured into development, production, or management. I n every case, a broad base of graduate study has sewed them well. I imagine that the expecta-
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tions of industry have not changed significantly, but perhaps the preparation of new hires has. To the academic elite, a chemist teaching in a liberal arts college or working inindustry may be a failed chemist. This paper is not the place to debate that issue. But I do suggest that our current model of graduate education may in fact impede real innovation in research. Until relatively recently, many chemists took a n exclusive and exclusionary \& of the discipline The defin~tionof whr~tchemists did was narrow and tr:lditional. Real chern~stsdidn't muck about with complicated cellular components or the complexities of the solid state. When the molecular biologists and the materials scientists came around lookine for chemical information, we politely informed them th; we weren't interested in their messv So thev went " svstems. " elsewhere, and sometimes began teaching their own chemistry under different names. Because of this myopic selfdefinition chemistry began to leak people and ideas. Many of those with interdisci~linarvinterests fled our science to the new intellectual fr'ntiers; Fortunately, there now seems to be a general realization that for the good of chemistry (and research in general) we must define chemistry broadly and emphasize its farreaching relevance to the othe;scwnces dnd to society at large. k:vidence of that recogn~tionIS affordvd by the new hybr~dmajors appruvod by the Committee on Proferi~mal Trammg and by a book cditc:d hy .Mary Good, former President of the. ACS. and ~ublishedbv the Socirtv a few vears ago ( I ) . It is called ~'iotechnologya n d ~ a t e ; i a l s science. The subtitle is particularly illuminating: Chemistry for the Future. Some of the most interesting problems are a t the interfaces between chemistrv and biolow. ~hvsics. . eneineering, geology, and other disciplines. In fact, these interfaces are fast disappearina. The discrete disci~linarv " sDec. trum of mid-century has-become a continuLm, and the future is hound to become even more interdisciplinary. I would have thought that the complex challenges of interdisciplinary research demand a broader, more thorough preparation than does a more traditional disciplinary focus. But curricular trends in maduate chemistry devartments seem to be going in theopposite direction.-Our-new PhD's may become world experts in some remote corner of chemistrv. - - - ~ ",but what if no one cares? What if the discoveries of such a specialist have great significance for other problems and other disciplines, hut the chemist does not recognize their implications and importance? In order for innovation in interdisciplinary research to occur, new synapses must be created and new syntheses must be carried out. To this end, we must prepare a t least some chemists to do what Thomas Kuhn called "revolutionary science" (2). That requires sufficient depth and breadth to recognize the anomalies that force transformations in the way in which the world, or a t least part of it, is viewed. Revolutionaries need both a broad base of knowledge and interdisciplinary cross-fertilization. Finally, I worry that too much emphasis on the mechanics of highly specialized research may blind students and scientists to the intellectual, cultural, aesthetic, and ethical values implicit in this way of investigating and interpreting nature. The late I. I. Rabi was certainly a n expert in physics, but he warned against overspecialization, the intellectual Balkanization that carries ~ h"v s i c sfurther from natural philosophy. The same warning applies to chemistrv. Those of us who teach the disci~linehave a meciel opportunity and obligat~onto share with our students the bt!duty end breadth of chemistry.
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Literature Cited
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