The Nebraska Instrument Sharing Consortium David H. Smith Doane College. Crete, NE 68333 The Nebraska Instrument Sharing Consortium (NISC) is a group of small colleges that have banded together to solve one of the pressing problems in chemical education-how to provide modern instrumentation to our students at an affordable price. Recently T. D. Roberts discussed several novel solutions in THIS JOURNAL.' Modern chemistry is an instrumental science. Scarcely a reaction is run today without using an instrument of some sort for the analysis of the products. Our students' education and their job and graduate school opportunities after graduation should be improved by extensive exposure to instruments. The problems of providing these instruments, mainly cost and "cost effectiveness," and sources of funding, well discussed in 1978 by Roberts.,' are even worse today with inflation, the disappearance of federal support and the spectre of declining student numbers. Solutions to the nroblems. short of actuallv havine extensive and continuing access to instruments a t another nearby institution (such arrangements can be found in larger cities), do not work. Films are not as effective as "hands-on" experience. Visits to universities even 20 miles away hog down in logistics nightmares, made worse by the propensity of heginning students to botch their first spectroscopy .. samples, . . ruining a whole day for them. Twents-five thousand dollarsfor an NMR for the use of 20 students a year is a luxury college business officers find resistible. Granting agencies and foundations likewise can find places they perceive their funds may be used more effectively. One problem is that without intensive research moerams. it is difficult to use anv instrument for more than six k e e k a a year for instructional purposes without unbalancine a course. The rest of the time the instrument sits idle. If ;her colleges can use the same instrument, that idleness is gone. The number of students benefiting from the instrument is increased several fold. "Cost effectiveness" is increased. Having individually exhausted all means of obtaining major new instruments, four small colleges in eastern Nebraska joined forces in 1977 to seek funding for modern chemical instrumentation. We all had gas chromatographs, infrareds, UV's, and other smaller equipment, and by forming a consortium, we made ourselves into a substantially large college (see table). On the colleee level. the consortium members iemain active competitoFs for &dents, as well as in sports and other activities. Still, cooperation is possible on the departmental level and such cooperation is actively encouraged by our administrations. We were successful in securing a grant from the "Innovation in Chemical Education" program of the Camille and Henry Drevfus Foundation. New Fork, for the purchase of &NMR, mass spectrometer, atomic absorption, spectrometer, and a high performance liquid chromatograph. The cooperation between the colleges was formalized with an agreement concerning - responsibility for damage, insurance, etc. Our sharing plan is quite simple since there are only four of us to share four instruments. We each have one instru-
-
This article is adapted from posters presented at the 15th Midwest Regional ACS Meeting. St. Louis. MO. 1979, and the Sixth Biennial Chemical Education Conference,Rochester. NY, 1980. Roberts, T. D., J. CHEMEouc., 55, 297 (1978).
'
88
Journal of Chemical Education
Slzes ot Colleges in the NlSC
Elem. Ckm. Dmne
45
-
Hanings Midland
90
.
Dan=
Gen.
Org.
Chem. Chem. 15 60 20 8 103
15 35 20 12 82
Inshu. Phys. Anal. Chem. 5 5 5 6 21
32 - - 167
2 3 5 2 12
Avg. ColMajors lege Per
Popu-
Year
lation
2.1 2 1.7 1.2 7
630 678 780 500 2588
--
ment a t a time for a three-week period each semester. Doane College, for instance, has the NMR the first few weeks of the fall and the last few weeks of the s ~ r i nu.e with . the other instruments arriving a t different times. The instruments are moved bv facultv members (students or maintenance ~ . e o.n l e could also do this) in private or college vehicles. The consortium does not own a truck for the NMR: thus. we save a substantial amount of money. Each inst&eit has heen assigned a home college where the faculty are to become our local experts on that instrument's operation and repair and are to perform preventative maintenance on the instrument during the summer. The University of Nebraska a t Lincoln has offered us back-up troubleshooting and repair services a t cost. This back-up provided a major strengthening of our original proposal and has had practical payoff in a couple of instances. Our method offers several advantages over other plans, such as Roberts': The students get to use the instruments in their own laboratories. The instruments are in one place for three weeks at a time or more so there is no rush to get everything done. The studentn (and faculty) have only one instrument to master at a time. There are also some disadvantages: Sharing requires some instruments to be used at awkward times. Daane must use the NMR during the first three weeks of the first semester, when organic students barely know what a hydrocarbon is. However, it is possible to teach NMR under these circumstances and, as a reward, we get the NMR vear.. when we do have substantial need for at the end of the . it. The period between times the instrument is present is often long enough far students (and faculty) to forget operating details.
.
.
~~
~~
Moving the Instruments Although the colleges involved are some distance from each other (a typical round trip is 370 miles), the instruments have withstood six years of moving very well. There has been only one failure that may have been due to transportation. The principal problem has been faculty inexperience in setting up and operating instruments; it is not a trivial job for an inexperienced person to tune up an NMR from scratch (esoeciallv if he forgets to remove the metal bolts that secure the magnet foimoving). On the whole, however, the movine problems have been minor. The NMR. which isabout the size of a desk and weighs 600 lh, moves almost easily on a steerable plywood cart with 8411. pneumatic wheels, made from military surplus equipment (see figure). Student response to the instruments has been even more
mer of 1979 with the aid of a NSF-LOCI grant. We held a two-week workshop with outside experts oneach instrument teaching us modern theory and practical operating tips, followed by a two-week session at home consolidating our knowledge and writing new experiments. The experimental were shared throughout the cons&tium. We strongly believe this training has been essential for the success of the project. Various Sharlng Models
Cart transporting the NMR equipment
enthusiastic than expected. Several new majors have resulted and several graduate school decisions have been made on the basis of positive experiences with modern chemistry. Although our data is inconclusive, our faculty experience is that students with access to instruments do learn instrument topics better, including learning about those properties of molecules that enable molecules to respond to the instruments. In their own way, the faculty has benefited as much from the program as the students. New teaching and learning opportunities have perceptibly improved morale. We do not have any local troubleshooting repair assistance, and such work, as well as the transportation of the instruments, has to come out of our already busy schedules. Still, the general attitude is that it is better to have problems with the instruments than it is not to have the instruments. An Additional Problem
As will be the case in many places, most of our faculty members were confronted by instruments we had not had an opportunity to learn to use in the past. In several cases, all four instruments were new. While all of us rather quickly learned to make the instruments work and designed useful experiments for our students to do with them, we felt the need for a time set aside for us to master the instruments and to write experiments for our students and the other members of the consortium. We were able to do this in the sum-
We are aware of onlv one other instrument sharine consortium that operates 6y actually moving the instruments around. The Arkansas-Kansas erouo. consists of 10 schools. a van, extensive summer training, considerable maintenance support from the University of Arkansas, and a cost of $250,000. In many of their colleges all six of their instruments (and a t least the NMR and mass suectrometer) are only present a week before they have to mo;e on. Our feeling is that such a group is too large for the students to have good access to the &tr;ments and is too costly. Our project,&th four schools and three-week sessions witb only one instrument (six weeks a year total) seems better. Our total start-up costs were only about $50,000 (in 1977-78) including summer training and experiment writing. Yearly operating expenses, including insurance, run about $400 per year per colleee. perhaps an ideal model would be a university to assist the formation of a consortium of local colleaes. Thev could offer training by their own experts and back-up instrument repair. Such services should be fully reimbursed by the consortium; their local availability is the important thing, as is the continued mutual support and communication between the university and the colleges. Physics, biology, geology, and astronomy are other areas where sharing is possible. Sharing pieces of physics and chemistry equipment between several colleges could he an attractive oackaee. Sharine amone d e ~ a r t m e n t within s one college or'univ&ity a l s o w s h o u lbe'encouraged. ~ For instance. a 1980 NSF-ISEP erant went to Humholdt State University in California forsharing a scanning electron microscope between the biolocv and eeolow -.de~artments. . 1nst;ument sharing m a y i e the only way many small and medium-sized schools can obtain instruments in the future and may provide larger universities better opportunities for obtaining the necessary tools for teaching. It is a practical and workable solution to a difficult problem. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Camille and Henry Dreyfuss Foundation, Inc., Innovation in Education in Chemistry Program, 1977, and the National Science Foundation LOCI Grant SER 79-00724.
Volume 63
Number 1 January 1986
69
