Chemical Education in American Institutions 0
MOUNT HOLYOHE COLLEGE EMMA PERRY CARR, Professor Emeritus Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts
IN A LIBERAL arts college for women, like Mount departments for the specialized work with only certain Holyoke, the primary function of the college is under- minimum requirements imposed by the faculty. There graduate education and the teacher's first responsi- shall be not less than forty-eight semester h o u r s 4 0 bility is to the undergraduate students. The graduate per cent of the total requirement for the d e g r e e i n the work leading to the M.A. degree is offeredprimarily for field of concentration, with not less than twenty-four the graduate assistants of the department, and the re- hours in the major department. To avoid oversearch activities of members of the staff are supported specialization in one department there is a limit of not and encouraged largely because these contribute di- more than thirty-six hours in a single department unless under special conditions, such .as honor work. The rectly or indirectly to their effectiveness as teachers. The curriculum of the liberal arts college has been faculty hopes in this way to avoid the twin dangers of much under discussion recently and Mount Holyoke, too much scattering on the one hand and too great in common with so many educational institutions, has specialization on the other, and this is substantially the just come through a long period of such discussion. framework within which the department of chemistry This resulted in some revision in the amount and char- has organized its work for more than a decade. acter of the required work and in certain phases of what In an institution such as this, chemical education is might be called the mechanics of the curriculum but the not and cannot be a highly specialized technical course fundamental educational pattern remains much the of training for specific types of chemical work. It same. Opinions may differ on many points in con- seeks rather to lay the foundation in chemistry and the nection with the curriculum of a liberal arts college but related work-physics, mathematics, and Germanthere is unanimity in the basic aim of preserving a upon which a student may build her specialized probalance between general education and specialized fessional work. The number of courses which a stuwork in a particular field. The principles which deter- dent takes is less and the actual material covered is more mine what and how much shall be included in the limited than is ordinarily the case with an under"general" education are the responsibility of the faculty graduate in a university or technical school, yet when as a whole, whereas the individual departments are left our students go to graduate school, medical school, or free to make the requirements in their own and related industrial laboratory they must compete successfully
Propom.d Chemistry-Physics Building (Physics b u i l d i n g at bit)
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with students of more extensive training. The mini- good teaching assistants and in giving to the course and mum requirements of the American Chemical Society the department a certain unity of purpose. Each of us Committee on Professional Training represent the is responsible for one of the more advanced courses in the department but this common interest in the elementary work brings us all in touch with the younger students and gives to the work a human interest and an intellectual stimulus which is difficult to attain where chemistry must be taught by mass production methods. Expensive of skilled personnel, yes, but this has been met in considerable part by a department organization that frees the teaching staff from the time-consuming care of equipment, preparation of the laboratory, and the general mechanics of laboratory management. That was an idea taken over from Dr. Alexander Smith at Chicago and later at Columbia when he turned over the laboratory "business" to Dr. Thomas B. Frees. Our department has an Assistant Director, who had majored in chemistry and has made laboratory management her profession. This means that the teaching staff is relieved of this hehind-the-scenes work and has made possible the continuation of some research with our fairly heavy teaching schedules. For.more than twenty years Mount Holyoke has had a system of general examinations which are given to seniors a t the end of their college course. This is an all-day examination which covers all the work of the maior subiect. Althoueh the denartment has never felt Vacuum Spectrograph satisfied .with the types of examination which we have given, nor with the results, for that matter, yet the maximum number of hours which our curriculum allows examinations are undoubtedly valuable to the students in one department. It is our problem, therefore, to de- as encouraging a more mature correlation of their differvise ways and means whereby we can provide the stu- ent courses and as an incentive to more thorough work. dent with the most effective scientific training within Another factor which has had a marked influence on the limited time. It is an ever-present problem with the quality of our undergraduate work is what is known no completely successful solution to report, but it may as Honors Work, the system by which a student whose be of value to review briefly some of the factors which general college average at the end of her junior year is in my judgment have been influential in shaping our 85 per cent may, with department approval, undertake policy. independent work on a special problem during the senior Probably the greatest single advantage that the col- year. Since physical chemistry is a senior course and lege offers in comparison with the university is that of the department strongly advises the course in qualitasmall classes and a very natural and easy relationship tive organic analysis as a prerequisite for honors work. between student and instructor. It has been our policy the time for special problems is limited. This varies for many years to have the most experienced teachers from six to nine hours,but these hours may be in excess in the beginning courses. Our laboratory sections do of the 30-hour major as limited by faculty action. not exceed fifteen students to an instructor or assistant Each problem is under the supervision of a member of and this laboratory teaching is never left to graduate the faculty and is often a segment of a larger research assistants alone. There are ordinarily about one hun- project to which graduate students and other members dred students in the beginning course and around fifty of the department may contribute. The extensive in the course for students with adequate high-school study of unsaturated hydrocarbons and, more recently, or preparatory-school training. Each of the members a project of the Office of Scientific Research and Deof the department takes a laboratory section of three velopment in the synthesis of new antimalarials are exhours and one discussion class per week in one of the amples of the larger problems to which the honor stutwo freshman courses. These small sections meet dents have contributed. The number of students who together twice a week for lectures and the general plan work for honors varies from year to year. This year for the course is the lecturer's responsibility, but the there are nine; rarely are there less than four. The courses are very definitely cooperative affairs. The value is not alone to the student in getting this introweekly general chemistry conference, where all-graduduction to research methods; she prepares a carefully ate assistants and members of the faculty-discuss the documented report of her work in the form of an honors problems of the past week's work and the plans for the paper which is bound and kept in the department linext assignment, have been invaluable aids in training brary and takes a special honors examination. There
JANUARY, 1948
is a very real value also to the members of the department in that the direction of honors problems and Masters theses keeps us alert and interested in productive research. The department has developed over t h e years a method of advising major students in their junior and senior years in the election of courses, which is again rather expensive of time but is possible where we have had from fifteen to twenty-five major students from each class. Insteadof delegating the advising to one or two members of the department, we get together as a group around the library table and twice a year discuss with each student individually her plan ofwork. Theopinionswhich are expressed may someHigh-Prssaure Hydrogenation Apparatus times b e conflicting. So much the better for the student, as it must be her own decisionin the end. Our staff for several of the experiments. The results have been has represented widely different backgrounds both in the so satisfactory that hereafter these will be used by undergraduate and graduate training; Vassar, Mount choice rather than necessity. The year course in bioHolyoke, B~ Mawr, Randolph-Macon have had chemistry is given in the Department of Physiology by representatives over a long period of years. And it is an organic chemist and there is a prerequisite of three a notable list of university teachers-Alexander Smith, years of chemistry. This course therefore meets the J. U. Nef, William McPherson, Wilder Bancroft, requirements of the A. C. S. Committee without adding Julius Stieglitz, E. P. Xohler, and T. B. Johnson, to hours to our limited major. Inasmuch as the college mention but a few-whose methods and inspiration does not offer specialized vocational training such as have been handed on to the young Mount Holyoke home economics there is no demand for courses which are directed toward special needs .of other departments. chemists. The number of undergraduate courses which the The graduate work for the M.A. degree was introdepartment offers has been reduced to a minimum as a duced as early as 1910 with the primary purpose of part of the college policy, and the general nature of the making the assistantships in the department more atcourses conforms t o the standards set by the American tractive to able students. It was something of an exChemical Society Committee. According to the new periment for an undergraduate college a t that time but curriculum of the college the basis of the beginning has become a very general practice and we count it one course is to be broadened so that it may better serve the of our most successful ventures. Of the 63 young student's general education and cultural development, women who have taken the M.A. degree in chemistry but it piill continue to lay the foundation for advanced from Mount Holyoke in the last quarter century, 25 work in the department. For freshmen whose score in have continued graduate work and now hold the Ph.D. the College Board Achievement Test in Chemistry and degree. About one-third were graduates of institutions the Mathematical Aptitude Test is satisfactory there is other than ours. This record alone would justify the a course in qualitative analysis which lays special stress policy but its by-product in the reaction on students on the theoretical principles.' and staff has been fully as valuable. Forty-three of The second semester of quantitative analysis departs our major students of the last thirty-five years have from the usual procedure in giving the student an intro- taken the Ph.D. degree in chemistry and since 1918 duction to micro methods and some experience in instru- rarely a year has passed without one or more publicamental analysis. The crowded condition of our physi- tions from the department. These are more or less concal'chemistry laboratory with thirty-one students this crete evidences of the influence of even so limited an year has necessitated the use of small-scale apparatus amount of graduate work. The more intangible values
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t o the department and the college cannot be so easily evaluated. According to our plan of work the assistant gives half of her time to department work and half to graduate study. Four graduate seminars are offered-in thermodynamics, advanced physical, advanced organic, and physical chemistry applied to organic problemsand students very frequently fulfill a part of their requirement by advanced work in a related department, most frequently physics. The course in thermodynamics is required of all Master's candidates and ordmarily they take two of the other courses. The content of these courses varies somewhat from year to year and includes recent work and literature search whenever possible. The major portion of the graduate student's time is given to experimental work on her special problem, the report of which is presented in the form of a thesis which must be approved by the department and the Graduate Committee of the college. The requirements are usually completed in the two years of half-time work. At the end, the candidate must pass a written examination in her graduate courses and an oral one on her thesis. The research interests of the department include both synthetic organic and physical chemistry, together with a combination of the two fields of work. The study of hydantoin derivatives extended over many years and a number of papers with student collaborators have been published. Studies in the absorption spectra of organic compounds were begun in the department in 1914. This type of physical measurement was undertaken in order that we might use it in connection with the synthetic organic research and thus give to the young graduate student as varied a training as possible, and at the same time that we might become skilled ourselves in
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
the use of a new physical tool which gave promise of wide application. As the work progressed it seemed advisable to undertake a systematic study of the characteristic absorption of a single chromophoric group, the carbon-carbon double bond. This investigation necessitated the preparation of very highly purified hydrocarbons and examination of their absorption spectra in the near ultraviolet with the quartz spectrograph and later in the far ultraviolet with the fluorite vacuum spectrograph. This extensive study of simple hydrocarbons has continued for almost twenty years and has been carried on as a group research project in which an organic chemist, a physicist, and two physical chemists have collaborated. It offered particularly favorable problems for honors and graduate s~udentsand our library has more than fifty graduate theses and honor's papers which report work in this field. In addition, there have been thirty-five publications by members of the staff and student collaborators which cover differentphases of the investigation. Group research in a small department adds much to the zest and interest of the work. Research develops slowly with the brief time a t one person's disposal when so much time and energy must go to teaching, but i t can repreaent a worth-while contribution to science if there can be the cooperative effort of an enthusiastic group. As is so often true, when a research project gets under way it is then possible to obtain financial support and this investigation has been aided greatly by grants from the National Research Council and the Rockefeller Foundation. The absorption spectra of .organic compounds in the far ultraviolet wave was almost completely unexplored and new techniques and new methods had to be developed. Equipment for this work in our laboratory was made possible through these grants. This theoretical investigation of the hydrocarbons was discontinued during the war for a group research project in organic chemistry in connection with the government's antimalarial program. The laboratory in which we work is old and far from adequate for our needs. It is a serious fire hazard, as fireproof buildings were not deemed necessary or possible when this was built in 1892. Our department library and spectrographic laboratories are housed temporarily in the near-by fireproof biological laboratory. The physics wing of a new physics-chemistry building was built in 1931 and this gave us additional muchneeded space in the old building. But the number of students taking chemistry has grown tremendously and the scope of the work increases constantly. Plans have been drawn for the completion of the building and it is hoped that this may not be too long delayed. Since its beginning in 1837 Mount Holyoke has always had a decidedly scientifictrend in its curriculum. It is indeed remarkable that a t that time seven sciences out of a total of twenty-three subjects were required of all students before graduation. Mary Lyon was herself an early teacher of chemistry and introduced indi-
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vidual laboratory work for the students that very first year. Professor Amos Eaton a t Rensselaer Institute in Troy was credited with being the .first to use the laboratory method of teaching, and in preparation for her teachmg Miss Lyon had spent a term a t Reusselaer, where she went, as she said, "to learn a new and unusual
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method of teaching chemistry in which the students perform certain of the experiments themselves." One hundred and ten years later there are new and unusual methods t o be learned and opportunities that are open t o women in chemistry which are far beyond the wildest dreams of our Founder.
