Quality and Instructor Commitment
I editorially I speaking
I n recent years major support from federal funds and the hard work of some especially able and dedicated chemical educators have combined to produce a profound and, for the most part meritorious, effect on the nature of college chemistry instruction. However, the full impact of this effect has been moderated somewhat by problems created by the temporary shortage of qualified instructors and by the population and knowledge explosions. So complex are the combined effects of these several factors on the content and quality of college chemistry courses that wide differences have arisen in the standards by which quality in iustruction is judged. There can be little doubt that courses taught today by committed, active, informed teacher-chemists who can take the time needed to do a good job are superior to those taught by their counterparts of a quarter-century ago. Our understanding of the subject matter, the preparation of the students, our insight into the learning proces- all have improved considerably during this time. Teaching loads, once oppressive, now are reasonable in most schools. Opportunities to attend meetings and conferences for the exchange of ideas and for the upgrading of one's competence are available to all. Expansion of facilities to accommodate the increasing numbers of students have provided better designed and better equipped instructional laboratories. Budgets and buying power of most educational institutions are at an all-time high. Despite all this the quality of instruction, as judged by the capabilities of entering graduate students and by those in frequent contact with chemistry programs at colleges of all kinds, does not appear to he greatly improved. While we might argue about what quality is and whether, having defined it, a single standard of quality should be applied to all courses and to all students, few would be satisfied that, viewed broadly, the improvement in the preparation of undergraduates is consistent with the improved state of our knowledge and with the extraordinary effort that has gone into the development of education in the sciences. There seems to be no simple explanation for this lagging improvement in quality. However, it is difficult to avoid looking at the instructor to see if his commitment has remained constant or has intensified during
this period. The teachers of chemistry who read this page will have to examine their own consciences on this point. Perhaps as they make these examinations they will find themselves thinking along the lines of one or the other of the presidents of two accredited four-year colleges whose views on undergraduate instruction can be summarized as follows: One president has said that his college no longer can afford PhD's to teach the lower division science courses. He points to the fact that many two-year colleges have non-PhD instructors in these courses and that many large universities use graduate students for more and more lower division teaching. He feels that the science PhD's on his staff are needed to teach the advanced courses, to train the students in research and to upgrade the effort of the college in scholarly productivity. He feels confident that his lower division instructors, totally committed to good teaching, will give courses of acceptable quality. The president of the second college feels he cannot afford not to have PhD's teaching the lower division science courses. He points out that high quality courses today require instructors who are broadly and deeply informed in the subject matter and actively engaged in scholarly work. He recruits only those who have these qualifications superimposed on a strong commitment to undergraduate teaching. He finds that these instructors agree with him that an important obligation of all scientists in a free society is to establish and maintain effective lines of communication between themselves and the citizenry. He seems to attract and to retain excellent personnel. I t is doubtful that the undergraduate courses at these two colleges offer the students comparable educational experiences, though this is not to say that instructors with the doctorate are necessarily better teachers than those without it. I t also is doubtful that the quality standards acceptable to one of these prefiidents will be acceptable to the other. As they re-examine their own commitment we hope that those teachers, a t universities and colleges alike, whose attitudes parallel those of the first of the two presidents will think again about Plato's "analogy of the cave." WTL
Volume 44, Number 1 1 , November 1967
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