Revision of the BS Curritulum in Chemistry In the course of revising the chemistry curriculum in Brown University three times and in visiting colleges on the Visiting Scientist Program over the past 15 years, certain fundamental approaches to cumculum revision have impressed me. The idea of putting these approaches to paper was triggered by the opportunity I had as a consultant to the COSIP (College Science Improvement Program) in India in the summer of 1971, where the Universities and Colleees " are beeinnine " serious self-examination in chemical education and other science fields. In revising a BS curriculum the faculty must be seers of unusual perspicacity because they muit prepare the BS candidate of today to serve as a chemist on the bench through 1980, 1990, and perhaps 2000. This means that the faculty must teach their students more collectively than they know themselves individually and not simply reiterate what they learned in 1940, 1950, or 1960. That is not an easy task. In the laboratory we must ask of the curriculum the following kinds of embarrassing questions 1) How many titrations must a student do hefore he knows all there is to know about titrations? 1,5, 10, n? 2) How many gravimetrie analyses must a student do before he can try a new one without instruction? 1,5,10, n? 3) How many pot-bailing experiments must an organicker watch before the exercise is no longer useful? 1.5, 10, n? 4) How many recrystallizations must a student do before he has mastered the technique? 1,5, 10, n? 5) How many cations and anions must a student identify before he can be said to have conquered the qualitative scheme? 1, 5, 10, n? Is the chemistry of sulfides as important as we imply by its universal use? Does a chemist ever use the qualitative scheme after he takes a job on the bench? Is there not a better way to teach equilihrium phenomena than the scheme? If an older generation of ehemists gave up the blow-pipe without permanent injury, must the present generation continue the qualitative scheme indefinitely? 6) How many swings of the analytical balance must a student watch before we replace 10 of these balances by a one-pan balance at the same expense? 100,1000,10,000,n? 7) How many iodimetry experiments must a student do before he can meet a new situation in an oxidation analysis? 1, 5, 10, n? 8) Must a student do knoh-turnine before or after we ., exoeriments . teach him w h n t is inride the hlxk IIUX~'~'? 9, Huw m a n y ot rhe exrrciws menuuned here ran br relinquished so that the student can become acquainted with paper chromatography, gas chromatography, thin layer chromatography, absorption spectra, photochemistry, and other new techniques? 1,5,10,n? 10) How many of the exercises mentioned here can be relinquished so that time can he spent in learning electronics? 1, 5, 10, n? Indeed, was the electronics we taught in the 1960's in the instrumental courses a waste of time in view of present dependence on diagrammed circuitry? Do we now rely wholly on the physics department" ti 'teach all the electricity and magnetism that a chemist needs? 11) How many hours can we spare from the 500 laboratory hours (approximate ACS standards) in order to introduce computer technology" 10, 50, 100, n? Or is the time for computer science to be takenfram the 400lectures (alsoACS standards)? 12) Are the two derivatives of an unknown in the "identification of organic compounds" still a sacred cow? How soon will we allow one of the derivatives to be replaced by an interpretation of an nmr spectrum? Among the first seven questions, I do not imply that the answer to each question is one or possibly five in some ~~
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provocative opinion cases, but I do say t h a t the number is finite and probably smaller than the number I see in the svllahi of universities and colleges. Since a BS chemist is manufactured for the bench in a constant volume of four years time, hard decisions on questions of this type must be made if new experiments and techniques are to he introduced into the curriculum. If the quantity of chemical information is doubling every seven years (or ten years) surely some of the old experiments must he replaced by experiments for the new information. Fortunately the number of new chemical principles is not doubling in the same time, hut the emphasis and some new nrinci~lesmust redace old ones or at least be used in a new way to explain old facts. One ~ r o m i n e n tinorganic chemist said in 1960: "The BS curricuium in chemistry should he divided into three equal parts: structure, energy, and kinetics." I t is probahly safe to say that no college or university curriculum in the U.S. did divide the curriculum in that way a t that time, and few do at present. It may also he argued that the curriculum need not reflect the way that research is burgeoning at any particular time. Most chemists would agree, however, that this division is more reflective of what has happened in chemistry since 1940 than the traditional descriptions of chemistry into the four fields: inorganic, analytical, organic, and physical. What we should know to revise the curriculum in 1973 is not what was happening in 1940 hut what will be happening in the next 30 years. No one told me in 1940 that I should learn matrix algebra, electronics, computer technology, molecular biology, nor even quantum mechanics to flourish as a chemist in 1973; yet some of these could have been predicted as useful to the chemist. The one idea that seems self-evident in 1973 is that any science gets more quantitative as it gets older. Hence we should be teachine our students (organic as well as others) more mathematics. Biology and hiochemistry which may appear to he descriDtive in nature todav will doubtless become more auantitative in time. Physical hiochemistry is coming into its own. Is it too bold to say that all BS students should be learning hiochemistry? I think not. What can be taken out of the constant volume to put in some hiochemistry, or must it be reserved for the graduate level as it is a t present in most institutions? Two procedures are open for revising the chemistry curriculum. One is to allow individuals carte hlanche for beginning courses and let the other faculty build on these beginnings, plugging omissions in course outlines or plumbing the depth of understanding among students early in the following courses and taking appropriate action. The scheme appears to work well where there are strong characters in the beginning courses, mutual trust among faculty, and willing workers in the following courses. Discontinuities, omissions, distortions, and needless repetition, however, seem inevitable in such a scheme. The repetition, for example, will arise because the heginning teacher expects only 70% for a passing mark whereas the following teacher expects total recall of the course outline and when he does not find it, seeks remedy by re-
tread. In 1948 we found that equilibrium phenomena were being taught in general chem, qualitative analysis, quantitative analyses, and then the physical chemists felt i t must be done "right" once more. The other scheme is to reach consensus among a limited number of faculty on the total content common for all students and then allow individuals to devise advanced offerings for the last two years of the four-year curriculum. We used this method a t Brown in 1948 to put the revised content of about 6 semester courses into five. A minor revision was made in 1952 and again a major one by consensus in 1963. Our experience suggests certain necessary requisites for success. 1) The total number of faculty involved should be greater than
7 to get a variety of backgrounds but not more than 12 else a con-
sensus cannot be reached. 2) Nomember of the group should he over 35 years of age. 3) Each faculty member can be allowed strong convictions but must have weak affiliations so that he is willing to give up even cherished soeeialties. ~reiudices.or hobbie's for the sake of wholesome content. (Some iac& who do not meet the secohd criterion csn he admitted because they meet the third.) 4) Radical changes require faculty willing to depart from textbmk content, willing to write their own material for gaps or new pathways of presentation. 5) An administration willing to foster an atmasphere in which change is fertilized and nurtured. I do not think that the situation is hopeless in schools that do not meet these requisites but the problems are more difficult. If lahoratory space is reckoned in acres in-
stead of square feet, then the cost of sudden change may he prohibitive but such large schools can move by starting with a small group, for example, the chemistry majors, and then move gradually to larger numbers over several years. With schools having staffs smaller than seven finding the requisite time to reach consensus because of teaching loads may be the chief factor in limiting change to tinkering with single courses. A small faculty is likely to rely more closely on existing textbooks, again because of the time factor. Small schools, however, have the advantage of quick recovery from changes found to be undesirable and also in greater flexibility because of smaller numbers. Changes in content do occur. I have visited no school that is still using blow-pipe analysis and some schools have dropped qualitative analysis altogether. Others have no course labeled auantitative analvsis but out the s ~ i r i t of quantitative chemistry into all their laboratory experiments. Organic chemistrv is no longer taueht - bv.the lasso method ad; elementary ideas of th&modynamics formerly taught in physical chemistry have reached the beginning course after high school texts showed that i t could be done. A popular general chemistry textbook writer who said ten years ago that no more physical chemistry could be put in the first year course now has a late edition with chapters on kinetics, thermodynamics, and bioenergetics.
Leallyn B. Clapp Brown University Providence, Rhode Island 02912
Volume 50, Number 4, Aprd 1973
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