Lawrence Verbit
and Stanley K. Madan SUNY ot Binghomton Binghomton, New York 13901
Junior Colloquium Filling a g a p in undergraduate chemical education
Junior Colloquium was introduced during our recent curriculum change in response to student and faculty con-' cem that certain less-fundamental hut still important material was being omitted from the education of our chemistry majors. The raison d'etre of Junior Colloquium is to allow us to have a course whose content is flexible so that it can he used to fill whatever gaps are felt to exist in the curriculum a t any given time. The course meets 1 hr/wk during the Fall semester and students normally take it in their junior year. Under our chemistry curriculum most majors will have completed a "core" of five one-semester courses during their first two years, giving them a first exposure to the various areas of chemistry. Building on this background then, Junior Colloquium nresentlv addresses itself to three diverse areasundergraduate-oriented talks by faculty members and industrial scientists, a readine assienment desimed to expose students to the humanklemeit in chemistry, and an introduction to the chemical literature. In order to tie together the facts and theories which the students have been exposed to in their lectures and textbooks with the research which actually generates such facts and theories, part of the course is devoted t o talks by faculty members and industrial scientists about their current research. These talks are geared to the level of our junior chem majors and are less formal than the usual lecture by a visiting scientist. Most importantly, the speaker has been informed beforehand of the need to make his' presentation a learning experience for the student. Questions during the talk are encouraged and this technique seems to lessen any feelings of awe which the neophyte chemist might have in the presence of an experienced PhD scientist. Much of the material presented by the speakers involves research areas and experimental techniques which might not be covered in typical undergraduate courses. This additional exposure serves to broaden the student's vista of chemistry while, ideally, stimulating him through exposure to the intellectual excitement of chemical research. Because historical aspects have been largely displaced from most chemistry courses, Junior Colloquium makes a modest effort to expose students to the "human side" of chemistry. The students are told early in the semester that they are to read some work which is concerned with
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the life of a scientist, preferably a chemist, rather than with his research results per se. A short written summary of the work read is due the last week of the semester. Examples of the suggested readings from which the student may choose include one of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry Lectures, "The Double Helix," by J. D. Watson, and "From My Life," by Richard Willstatter. Student comment about this reading experience is highly favorable; many feel that it helps to put some flesh on the somewhat scrawny framework of chemistry. A final aim of Junior Colloquium is to introduce the student to the vast literature of chemistry. Three lectures have been found to he optimum for this purpose. The first lecture discusses the primary literature and considers a typical research paper in detail. Some foreign journals are exhibited to show the universality of chemical research, no matter what the language of publication. Secondary information sources are covered next, particularly Chemical Abstracts. Tertiary sources such as review journals and monographs are then considered, followed by a short discussion of such reference works as Beilstein, Gmelin, Elsevier, and Landolt-Bornstein. The last lecture on the chemical literature focuses on recent developments in information science. This brings the student hack to a consideration of secondary sources hut now in terms of recent concepts designed to help cope with the literature explosion. Topics discussed include current awareness journals, retrospective searching, e.g., Science Citation Index, and computerized information retrieval. In order to reinforce the lectures on the chemical literature, each student is given an assignment to write a short annotated bibliography on a topic of recent research interest. These assignments may he varied and made quite interesting as, for example, having the students track down publications resulting from the PhD work of various members of the department. In summary, Junior Colloquium is a variegated course designed to fill whatever gaps are felt to exist in the education of our chemistry majors. Hence, the course has the built-in flexibility to change as other areas of need are identified. Presented before the Division of Chemical Education. 164th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, N& York, August 1972.
