Chemical Education Today
Commentary
The National Scene Graduate Programs in Chemistry: A Time for Innovation and Reform by G. A. Crosby In June of 1995 the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate (MPS) of the National Science Foundation organized a workshop on Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Training in MPS. Included among the findings and recommendations emanating from the workshop is the assertion that the skills and knowledge acquired by new PhDs are too narrowly focused and not commensurate with the requirements of the employment positions that many of them will ultimately assume. The MPS community is urged to consider changes in the conduct of graduate education to correct the perceived deficiencies.1 To those of us who have been research directors and mentors for many decades the findings of the NSF workshop came as no surprise. The forces molding the university research enterprise inexorably produced the current condition. As the focus of graduate education shifted from the education of students to the production of research (and publications), from the treatment of students as junior colleagues to their exploitation as “hands”, the effect on the student apprentice was profound. Those among us who clung to the old methods and kept the focus on education paid a huge price for sticking to our convictions. There is no turning back the clock. Those entering the graduate schools in 1996 are the products of the undergraduate programs, and many of those programs are singularly deficient. Particularly at large universities students can “muddle through”, often reaching the senior year without identifying with a department, without receiving more than perfunctory career guidance, without experiencing the sense of belonging that comes with intense engagement in learning with peers and interacting with …the skills and committed faculty. For those transferring from two-year institutions knowledge the situation is often worse. They acquired by may begin to think of pursuing graduate study without becoming new PhDs are attached, emotionally or intellectutoo narrowly ally, to any department or even to focused… the degree-granting institution! The situation is compounded by the myriad different ways a student can progress toward a degree and be graduated with an “education” that has no coherence at all. Is it any wonder that many enter the graduate schools without the academic breadth and depth that will anchor them psychologically as they become immersed in narrowly focused programs? Where can changes be made that will begin to reverse the trends that have carried us to our present sta-
tus, changes that will produce something more than technical training programs? One suggestion is to revitalize the Master’s Degree. It seems to me that a properly designed BS/MS program could solve many problems. If capable students were apprised of such a program in the junior (or sophomore) year, The BS/MS option is were guided into research as one way to address undergraduates and thereby absorbed into the departmental the problem of and laboratory culture, were al- naïve, haphazardly lowed to accumulate some educated, BS graduate credits while still undergraduates, and were guided graduates entering toward an MS degree early in narrowly focused their undergraduate careers, then an MS (with thesis) could PhD programs… be acquired just 15 months to two years after the BS degree was received. They could also be engaged as teaching assistants early in their careers, be supported in summers to carry on research, and be able to broaden, in many ways, their experience as aspiring professional chemists. They might spend a summer as an industrial intern, for instance. Graduates of such a program could opt for employment or, possibly, apply to another university to pursue a PhD degree. The current manifest concern to educate all students in the rudiments of the sciences (science literacy) will lead to more dilution of those who have the aptitude and the interest to become professional scientists. Mechanisms must be found to identify these students, provide them with opportunities special and worthwhile, and mentor them carefully. The BS/MS option proposed above is one way to begin to address the problem of naïve, haphazardly educated, BS graduates entering narrowly focused PhD programs that equip them poorly to meet the demands of the emerging world of science and technology. The perception that something is vitally wrong with the educational practices leading to the PhD complements the rising concern about the dysfunctional nature of many undergraduate programs and the national realization that the K-12 system has badly failed the nation’s youth. Isn’t it becoming clear that we cannot fix one of these components without addressing the needs of the others? Since today’s PhD graduates are tomorrow’s academic leaders, broadening, liberalizing and refocusing these programs on the needs of the student may be the best place to begin.
1http://www.nsf.gov/mps/workshop.htm Summary Report: Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Training in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences.
G. A. Crosby is in the Department of Chemistry, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-4630
Vol. 73 No. 10 October 1996 • Journal of Chemical Education
A235
