.APRIL, 1949
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195
NATIONAL COOPERATIVE UNDERGRADUATE CHEMICAL RESEARCH PROGRAM ETHALINE CORTELYOU
Armour Research Foundation, Chicago, Wiois
A
NATIONAL cooperative undergraduate chemical research program was organized a t the St. Louis meeting of the Division of Chemical Education of the American Chemical Society, Feptember 6, 1948, for the dual purpose of stimulating undergraduate chemical research and of supplying data to fill existing gaps in the chemical literature. W. P. Cortelyou, chairman of the chernistry department of Roosevelt College, was appointed chairman of the organizing committee, and Ethaline Cortelyou, a technical editor of Armour Research Foundation, was named secretary and editor of the catalog of projects. Any teacher interested in sponsoring a project suitable for cooperative undergraduate research is requested to write to the author for a standard form to be filled in as a one-page description of the project to be inserted in the catalog. Each project must be on a problem in which usable data can be obtained from check results made by two or more students assigned to the prohlem, independent of and unknown to each other. A project may contain one or more research units, each of such a nature that acceptable results are probable within 50 hours of laboratory wo~k,the equivalent of one semester-hour of college credit. The teacher proposing such a project will act as project director, assigning each research unit to three or more students (each one in a different school), furnishing instructions and suggestions for research procedure, and receiving and comparing the final results. He will send a tabulation of the verified data and the names of the checking students to N. A. Lange who has offered to cooperate with the program by issuing official Cer-
tificates of Acceptance to successful students and to publish usable data in the "Handbook of Chemistry." When sufficient data have been obtained a project director may submit an article on his project for publication. Upon request, one free copy of the catalog, containing descriptions of all current projects, will be sent to each school desiring to participate in the program. It is hoped that eventually the program will be sponsored by the Division of Chemical Education of the American Chemical Society. At St. Louis the organizing committee voted to finance the program for its first year by levying a tax of ten dollars ($10) on each school having one or more project directors. More than 75 teachers have expressed an interest in the program and some have started research projects already in this fall semester of 1948. Others plan to start the program in their schools next semester. Some will he project directors and many will cooperate by directing the research of their own students on projects directed by others. Members of the organizing committee are: Forrest Blankenship, University of Oklahoma; G. E. Brown, Culver-Stockton College; E. Seaton Carney, Hartwick College; Ethaline Cortelyou, Amour Research Foundation; W. P. Cortelyou, Roosevelt College; Rev. Bestin Emling, St. Vincent College; John B. Entrikin, Centenary College; K. E. Jackson, University of Alabama; E. V. Jones, University of Alabama; Colonel F. C. Mortensen, Fort Leavenworth; A. C. Over, Lewis College of Science and Technology; J. C. Simms, North Georgia College; E. A. Wildman, Earlham College; and John Xan, Howard College.
