Chemical Education Today
Report
The Future of U.S. Chemistry Research: Benchmarks and Challenges
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by Charles P. Casey,* Joseph S. Francisco, and Tina M. Masciangioli
Overview of the NRC Report The National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy asked the National Research Council to convene a panel to Benchmark the Research Competitiveness of the U.S. in Chemistry. The panel was charged with addressing three specific questions:
1. What is the current position of U.S. chemistry research relative to that of other regions or countries?
2. What key factors influence U.S. performance in chemistry?
3. On the basis of current trends in the United States and abroad, what will be the relative U.S. position in the near term and in the longer term?
The report was released in March 2007 and can be read without charge on the National Academies Press Web site at http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11866 (accessed Apr 2007). Copies may also be purchased. A short summary of the report appears in the Supplemental Material.W For the purposes of the study, the panel divided the chemical research enterprise into eleven areas: Analytical
Chemistry, Atmospheric Chemistry, Biological Chemistry, Chemical Education, Inorganic Chemistry, Macromolecular Chemistry, Materials Chemistry and Nanoscience, Nuclear and Radiochemistry, Organic Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, and Theory/Computation. Separate assessments of the current status of U.S. research in these areas are provided in Chapter 3 from pages 43–62. An example of a detailed assessment is given for Chemical Education in the box below. WSupplemental
Material
The two-page Report in Brief that highlights the main findings of this NAS benchmarking exercise is available as a PDF file in this issue of JCE Online. Charles P. Casey is an emeritus member of the Department of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI 53706;
[email protected]. Joseph S. Francisco is a member of the Department of Chemistry, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907;
[email protected]. Tina M. Masciangioli is a staff member of the Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology, National Research Council, Washington, DC 20001;
[email protected].
The United States Is the Leader in Chemistry Education Background Chemistry education is a relatively new research area at the crossroads between chemistry and science education. The questions investigated often develop from concerns raised by teaching chemists, and the research tools come from the science education community. Chemical educators apply theories of teaching or learning to study the interaction between how students learn chemistry and how the subject is taught. A new paradigm where teaching innovations are introduced based on research is replacing the reverse process. Many of the papers in chemistry education still follow the old paradigm: evaluation of one teaching method versus another with little or no reference to the underlying learning theory or presentation of isolated bits of information on the teaching/learning process. Chemistry education researchers are hampered by their relative isolation since few universities have more than one chemistry educator. The United States provides significant funding for education efforts in chemistry, but little funding is directed specifically at research in chemistry education. For example, NSF’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program involves large numbers of research chemists
in education projects but does not focus on the research aspect of chemistry education. Assessment Publications by U.S. authors accounted for 64 percent of content for the Journal of Chemical Education, with the rest of papers being contributed mainly from Canada, the United Kingdom, and Spain. Other countries showing particular leadership and strength in this area are Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, and the United Kingdom. U.S. chemists contributed 74 percent of the highly cited articles in chemistry education between 1995 and 1999 and 68 percent between 2000 and 2006. These results taken alone place the U.S as the leaders in chemical education. In the United States there are two chemistry education programs that have a concentration of researchers. These two programs (Purdue University and the University of Wisconsin) showed high visibility in the virtual congresses organized by non-U.S. chemical educators. The virtual congress data show a 49 percent participation by U.S. speakers. When combined, the publications analysis and the virtual congress data place the U.S. as the leader in chemical education.
www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 84 No. 7 July 2007 • Journal of Chemical Education 1089
