Seminars: learning or lethargy?
"Are you going'?" "Where?" "Professor Ad Infinituni is s p c : ~ k i ~today ~g in the seminar room. The grad studenk havc bcen talking about the faculty not showing up at seminars. It's hard enough gett,ing an audiencc a s it is. Do me a favor and come along." "But, look, I've got worli to do. 1s (his Infiriitum a friend of yours?" "Yes." "By the way, what is he t,alking on?" "He's going to go over the latest work out 01' his 1;lboratory. You h o w , we work in t,hc same field. We've been talking about it all morning. It's really exciting stuff. They think they've found out why. . . " We're being seminared and colloquiumcd to death.
I don't know bow you feel about it, hut I'm dead tired of being dragooned along with a flock of unwilling graduate students (it's required as a course or something) to attend another highly technical t,alk given to m e member of the audience and, possibly, his st,udents. In thc good old days when stutlents were really st,udents and a graduate student could reasonably be cxpected to be conversant with the suhject of chemistry taken as a whole, the audience at one of these seminars could follow most speakers, no mat,ter wllwt the particular topic of the talk. At the present t,ime the study of chemistry has covered so much territory that one graduate school that I know of has four separately organized seminars (in organic, physical, inorganic, and analytical chemistry) and each of these groups has weekly meetings. In addition, they have student seminars, special interest group seminars, and general seminars with speakers who can talk on "general" topics or are too distinguished t,o foh ofl on one of t,he smaller groups. The subject material of most of these seminars is so highly technical t,hat none but thc init,iatcd can follow t,he speaker after the opening few minutes. There appears to be a wide-spread misconception among speakers that the audience wants the latest datum hot nut of his laboratory, or even the lat,est theory halfbaked out of the last talk the spcaker had with his research student,^. This misconception is fostered by several pertinent factors. First, the speaker has usually been invited to give the talk in the first instance by a colleague in his own held of specialization at the host inst,itution. (This is, in reality, an inexpensive way to renew old friendships, consult, and trade ideas.) Thus, t,he speaker will spend much of his time during his visit in highly specialized and technical discussions with his host. These discussions are then followed by a formal presentation of the same material, but to a. largcr audience. 682
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provocative opinion Sccond, the spcnker's self-est,eem deems it necesslry to pitch his talk at a level his host will understand and appreciate. KO one else may follow t,he presentation, but his host car1 nod appreciatively a t all the subtle points which are made. If, perish the thought, the speaker gave a low-level general talk what would his colleague think of him? For that matter what would the audience think of him and his colleague. After all, thc complexity (and even obscurity) of the subjcct matter reflect. as well on his colleague's stat,ure as his o\vn. Thinl, there is freqnent,ly a hidden hope that the :iudicnce may have critically read and studied all of the spealier's papers and be either laying in wait for him or genuinely interested in the latest dope. Lastly, t,hrre is that ever-present plague which all specialifits should be aware of and that is that what appears obvious and simple to the specialist himself (by virtue of years of study) must also be somehow self-evident t,o any chemist with a modicum of training. This, of course, is not so. How, then, does one handle thc seminar? There are sevcral modes of individual survival. The first is just to boycott the seminars. This can easily be rationalized by dint of more "important? work, but it docs malic it difficult to insist that graduate students attend while you do not. Fortunately for those who do not snore, many spcaliers give slide talks. The combinat,ion of a darkened room, a softly drnning spewker, and t,he prevalence of late afternoon seminars always makes seminar time an excellent siesta t,in~e. If the lights are on you can always sit t.oward the back of the room and grltde papers, thumb through the latest issue of Chemical Abstracts, write letters, worli up exams, ctc. Any writing activity is good since it creat,es the illusion that yon are taking notes. In our Colloquium Series this past year a t Wright State University, we have attempted a more general solution to the seminar problem. Insofar as it \vas possible within the bounds of politeness we have insisted that our speakers give "low-level" general talks. The guiding principle was that a talk in physical chemistry could be followed in it,s entirety by an organic chemist, and vice versa. We wanted general and simplified introductions into t,he speakor's area of npecialization. The lower the level of the talk, the better. We xwre also interested in having the speaker answer on this general level the question "Why anuld any one in his right mind be doing research in. . . l" It was q u i k difficult to persuade our speakers that we did indeed wish to hear low-level general seminars. Where me mutually succeeded the results were ext,remely gratifying. As an audience we never felt. left. out,. We could actually follow upwards of 90% of the talk! The speakers were usually surprised at, the 11umbe.rof quest,ions they were asked and the gemii~re
spirit of discussion which prevailed. We attribute this to the ability of the audience to follow the material and mostly to the willingness of the audience to ask simple and grneral questions. At a highly technical talk only the experts have sufficient knowledge to ask questions they will not be ashamed of asking. After a "lowlevel" t;ilk it is very easy to ask simple questions without feeling at all embarrassed. I:nm our experience at the Wright, %ate University
we would st,rongly recommend that seminars be set a t such a level that 90% of the audience can follow 90% of the seminar. I t is a much better way to fill a lecture hall than to give t,he seminar a course number and make it required.
Rubin Battino Wright Sate University Dayton, Ohio 45431
Volume 44, Number 7 I, November 1967
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