The Education Frontier This editorial continues a series on frontier topics in analytical chemistry that began with Materials Chemistry and the Analytical Chemistry of Biological Systems. The consequences of exploring these frontiers of chemical and analytical chemical knowledge will help to shape and define future analytical chemistry. What is taught to our future analytical chemistry scholars and workers as they pass through their undergraduate experiences will also, and just as indelibly, serve to define future analytical chemistry. Education must be considered a perpetual frontier, otherwise, it stagnates and ultimately fails. Our educational apparatus determines the body of knowledge taught as "analytical chemistry" and, thus, future perceptions of its "boundaries" and indeed its identity as a subdiscipline of chemical sciences. The educational process is a strong determinant of our future movers and shakers according to how well it attracts and inspires students to choose careers in analytical chemistry. Analytical chemistry has in the past been generally well served by its educational structure. We cannot take for granted that it will be as well served in the future. It deserves continual discussion. Just as research and discovery in our industrial and academic laboratories leads to inexorable expansion of the science of chemical measurements, so must educational choices be made among the new discoveries as to which belong in the distillate of knowledge imparted to students. What are the components of a vigorous education frontier? As professionals, we should be just as willing and eager to discuss educational issues at professional meetings as we are to discuss our latest results as research scholars or our latest instrument prod-
ucts. Interested participants should include educators at colleges and research universities as well as users of analytical chemical knowledge in industry and government laboratories and offices. A national meeting is not essential; any two chemists can have a conversation! Debate and discussion of the content of formal classes and laboratories is crucial. What must be known by our undergraduate s t u dents? Which results of current research should be incorporated into the curriculum, and what less vital knowledge deleted from it? Are the analytical chemistry courses supportive of, and supported by, the rest of the chemistry curriculum? There are substantive related issues: What are the mechanisms that evoke and facilitate continual change and improvement in the educational apparatus? Certainly, good textbook authors are needed, as are imaginative and creative publishing houses. Hard questions could be asked about the current system of occasionally revised, massive textbooks: Is it a satisfactory and effective component of undergraduate education? Our students should encounter modern laboratory experiences; improvements on this part of the educational frontier involve substantial resource barriers. Who contributes and at what level to this expensive part of science education: the student (and parents), the state, chemical industry? We hope that this JOURNAL can play a small part in provoking constructive ferment and debate about the education frontier in analytical chemistry. The current din of discussion is a little hard to hear.
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 63, NO. 13, JULY 1, 1991
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