Editorial pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Innocents Abroad: A Journal’s Outreach to India Norbert J. Pienta* Department of Chemistry, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-2556, United States ABSTRACT: The editor describes an outreach visit to India and discusses chemical education issues in the United States and India. KEYWORDS: General Public, Public Understanding/Outreach
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India has a collection of private and public universities whose origins span a long timeline, a set of research institutes (e.g., Indian Institutes of Technology,2 the Indian Institute of Science,3 and the Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research4) originating mostly in the postcolonial era, and a newer collection of Indian Institutes of Science, Education, and Research (IISER).5 With a booming economy and a government focus on science and technology, these latter IISER institutions are a wonder to behold: a campus for 200 faculty, 1000 doctoral students and 1000 undergraduates all in science disciplines going from concept to fulfillment in less than a decade. Seeing massive, new science buildings being built across India at a time when U.S. universities have little construction of any kind gives this scientist hope about the future of science and chemistry from a global perspective. Besides new concrete, marble, equipment, and instrumentation, there were also new people on those campuses. Discussions with these chemists and chemical educators put human faces on that optimistic view. At every institution we visited, individuals identified themselves as Journal readers, authors, and reviewers. A search of the JCE archives reveals content from Indian authors going back to the earliest volumes; the Journal has been and continues to be an international instrument for dissemination. The Journal and its copublication partner, the ACS Journals Division, are diligently working to make JCE content more widely available across India, especially through institutions. The experiences on each side of the globe can and will enrich the other group. Some questions are identical to the ones that educators discuss at American meetings: Given the extensive amount of material available, what content should be included in classes and laboratories? What are the best pedagogies for delivering this information? Other issues are unique to each region, arising from traditional approaches and organization. For example, the Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Science, Education, and Research admit potential bachelor-of-science students based on a written, national exam, selecting from the top 1% or even top 1/2% of the scores. How does one ensure that the most creative or innovative students have an opportunity when the cutoffs are based on content knowledge? In these institutes, the focus is science. That’s how they have been formulated. So how does one ensure that writing plays a sufficient role in the curriculum in the absence of a liberal arts component?
he ACS Journals Division organized an outreach trip to India in order to expand contact with researchers and scholars in Indian institutes and universities, and invited the Editor of this Journal to participate. A recent move to the University of Georgia, the intricacies of travel regulations of two countries, and the responsibilities of his several jobs conspired to keep your Editor from getting to go, but in the end, some higher order in the publishing universe prevailed. Before beginning with the details that inspire this piece, it seems appropriate to explain the title. Mark Twain’s book, The Innocents Abroad,1 resulted from a series of newspaper articles and other manuscripts he wrote while on a steamer to Europe and Africa, particularly the Mediterranean and the Holy Land. Apropos to a description of my travels and serving as a source of inspiration are some words from Twain himself:1 “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” Twain traveled by steamer, a refurbished ship from the U.S. Navy, affording him the time to write and report extensively and resulting in a travelogue or the equivalent of a blog that eventually turned into the book. Your author travelled by airplane on a trip that took him literally halfway around the globe in just over 20 sleepless hours. And then a series of local flights, buses, and hired cars enabled the visits to 10 cities and 15 institutions. There were exotic locations and fine accommodations, but also a sequence of days that involved travel to a new city in the late evening, a new hotel (each with a different and often perplexing set of controls for the lights), early morning check-out, a full program at one or two institutions, and another ride to the airport to start the cycle again. And again. That’s almost two dozen trips through airport security: “You want me to take everything out of my computer bag, including each one of my 25 adapters, converters, cables, and devices? The folks in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, and everywhere else thought they looked just fine.” And then there was the chance meeting of my esteemed colleague from Indianapolis in the security line at Pune airport. “What the heck are you doing here?” With an Indian population of 1.2 billion (give or take a few million), the odds of a chance meeting are quite low. (If you consider only people who use the airports, the odds go up, of course. Readers are welcome to use these data to generate a statistics question for their classes, but this is merely a digression and not the main point.) © XXXX American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
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dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed300828s | J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Journal of Chemical Education
Editorial
Given the list of similarities that seem to span the globe and those differences that are specific to a country, it is clear that communication is an essential part of the solutions and to the decision-making process. Face-to-face meetings and outreach trips like the one sponsored by the ACS Journal Division enable connections between institutions and collaboration between individuals. Trading participants between national (i.e., American Chemical Society or Indian Chemical Society) meetings or specialized chemical education ones seem like a natural place to bring more individuals into contact with each other. The Journal is another. Our time from submission to publication keeps getting shorter, so JCE represents an efficient and timely way to bring our experiences to each other’s attention. This issue also announces the official launch of another JCE endeavor, a new Web site aptly called JCE ChemEd Xchange6 that is designed to promote discussion and interaction. Jon Holmes, managing editor, describes the workings of the partner Web site in an announcement in this issue.7 Writing in another editorial in this issue,8 Deanna Cullen, one of our precollege associate editors, provides insight into some of the current content available at the JCE ChemEd Xchange, as well as expectations for this feature. Thus, the Journal’s 90th Volume continues our rich tradition while it includes the launch of a partner Web site that includes familiar content and new components. This one of the “innocents” returned from India to several full in-boxes, curricular revision, and laboratory assignments, all part of my credentials as a chemical educator. There are not many (any?) auto-rickshaws and far fewer vehicles trying to simultaneously occupy two lanes in Athens, Georgia than in Delhi. My favorite Indian food is no longer a few miles but more like 10,000 miles away. In India, the cow is sacred; in Georgia, it's the bulldog. Your editor left here an “innocent” yet has returned even more convinced of the importance and significance of chemical education. Happy New Year.
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*E-mail:
[email protected]. Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
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REFERENCES
(1) Twain, M. The Innocents Abroad: Or The New Pilgrims’ Progress; American Publishing Company: Hartford, CT, 1869. http://www. gutenberg.org/ebooks/3176 (accessed Dec 2012). (2) Indian Institutes of Technology. http://iit.org/iithistory (accessed Dec 2012). (3) Indian Institute of Science. http://www.iisc.ernet.in/ (accessed Dec 2012). (4) Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. http://www.jncasr.ac.in/ (accessed Dec 2012). (5) Indian Institutes of Science, Education, and Research. http:// mhrd.gov.in/iiser_hindi (accessed Dec 2012). (6) JCE Chemical Education Xchange. http://www.jce.divched.org/ (accessed Dec 2012). (7) Holmes, J. L. JCE Chemical Education Xchange. J. Chem. Educ. [Online early access]. DOI: 10.1021/ed300790q. Published online Nov 30, 2012 (accessed Dec 2012). (8) Cullen, D. M. JCE Chemical Education Xchange: X Marks the Spot for Finding Quality Chemistry Education Resources. J. Chem. Educ. [Online early access]. DOI: 10.1021/ed3007617. Published online Dec 3, 2012 (accessed Dec 2012). B
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