Chemical Education Today

JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 75 No. 11 November 1998 • Journal of Chemical Education 1381

For those of us who had not been to Boston since thelast ACS meeting it was surprising to see how vibrant thecity was. The shops, restaurants, parks, and other attractionsthroughout the large inner city area made the meeting mostenjoyable. Again, our banquet cruise of the harbor was blessedwith excellent weather. The ship went out far enough so thatwe landlocked people could feel the waves. The entire pro-gram had a celebratory tone—two sessions marking the 70thbirthday of Glenn Crosby, a memorial symposium celebrat-ing the teaching innovations of Hubert Alyea, and the 75thanniversary of the Journal of Chemical Education (p 1360).Content issues in upper division chemistry courses as well asgeneral chemistry took up a large portion of the program.Some of the symposia are discussed below.

Symposia Focusing on Upper Division Chemistry

Michael Henchman and Colin Steel from Brandeis Uni-versity conducted a session devoted to the teaching use of aportable, inexpensive, and rugged mass spectrometer thattheir group has developed. Laboratory experiments in gen-eral chemistry, physical chemistry, and instrumental analysiswere presented. For those unable to attend the meeting, thiswork has been published on pp 1042–1054 of the August1998 issue of J. Chem. Educ. Of particular interest is the ar-ticle about how a quadrupole focuses ions. The cover of theAugust issue is a student artist’s rendition of an ion travelingdown a quadrupole.

The CHED Committee on Computers in ChemicalEducation again organized symposia: (i)Computers and Col-laboration in Chemical Education and (ii)Using SymbolicMathematics Software to Teach and Learn Chemistry. Thelatter continues the program to develop projects that useMathcad, Maple, and Mathematica in chemistry courses. Forthose of you that follow this effort, Theresa Zielinski’sMathcad Web site is now up and running on the Journal ofChemical Education’s JCE Internet; this feature column is lo-cated at http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/JCEWWW/Columns/McadInChem/index.html. Theresa Zielinski (Monmouth Uni-versity) and Geri Richmond (University of Oregon) organized

jointly with the Division of Physical Chemistry the sympo-sium Physical Chemistry: Taking the Research to the Stu-dents. A number of course and exercise examples were pre-sented to make physical chemistry less fearsome and morerewarding. In particular, John Pojman from the Universityof Southern Mississippi explained how he brings his studieson non-linear chemical dynamics into the classroom. Pojmanwas followed by Benjamin de Graff of James Madison Uni-versity, who brings his research on the absorption and emis-sion of polarized radiation into his physical chemistry lec-tures. Both showed that such excursions from the normal cur-riculum made the course more lively without detracting fromthe necessary topics.

General Chemistry Symposia

Is general chemistry an oxymoron or a legitimate enter-prise? Can a zero-based curriculum be adopted in generalchemistry? Is there an irreducible chemistry core? Is chemis-try for general students as important as general chemistry forthe future image of chemistry and combating chemophobia?A symposium on general chemistry and chemistry for gen-eral students discussed introductory chemistry for sciencemajors, as well as a component of general education. Thespeakers, including several members of the Division’s TaskForce on the General Chemistry Curriculum, determined thatthe answers to all of the above questions are important indesigning a general chemistry course. Answering these ques-tions is something that educators in the 21st century will haveto resolve.

While on the topic of general chemistry, considerwhether electrical engineering students should take a generalchemistry course. This is the type of question facing chemis-try and engineering educators now that the AccreditationBoard for Engineering and Technology (ABET) has com-pletely revised their guidelines. The new ABET criteria, calledEngineering Criteria 2000, completely eliminate specificcourses. Instead, an engineering faculty has to define educa-

Meeting Report

Boston ACS Meeting, Chemical Education Program

by Tom Wildeman, Frank Torre, and Julianne Smist

Paul H. L. Walter (left) presents the ACS Northeast Regional HighSchool Teacher Award to Richard A. Brown.

Meeting chairs for the Boston ACS meeting, Julianne Smist (left)and Frank Torre.

Tom

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Chemical Education Today

1382 Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 75 No. 11 November 1998 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu

tional objectives that are best for their students, design coursesto fit those objectives, and then continuously assess the out-comes of that program. In the context of these new criteria,it is quite legitimate for engineering faculty to ask whethertheir students should take chemistry. This question and oth-ers confronting the role of chemistry in engineering educa-tion were dealt with in a three-session symposium. For thosechemical educators who have begun the curriculum negoti-ating process with their engineering colleagues, the requiredlearning objectives may not include things such as extensiveequilibrium calculations. However, an extensive section onthe chemistry of materials may be necessary. Those speakerswho have gone through this objective-setting process, com-ing together on common themes with their engineering col-leagues has been an arduous yet rewarding task. From whatthe speakers said, it is clear that the revolution in general

chemistry may come from the design of courses for engineer-ing students.

Other Symposia

A joint symposium with the Younger Chemists Com-mittee focused on the rewards and challenges that face youngfaculty members. The speakers were eight faculty memberswho are early in their academic careers. Among the topicsdiscussed were the viability of non-tenure track instructor po-sitions as alternatives to the tenure track, the non-traditionalcareer paths such as switching from industry to academics orfilling a temporary faculty position prior to finding a tenuretrack position, and using these various positions as an ad-vantage. Specific suggestions were given for early planningto help jump-start an academic career and for using innova-tive technology in the classroom without having an adverseeffect on the tenure decision. One special observation thatcame from the talks concerned mentors. The speakers andparticipants observed that they do not have one mentor butseveral, and the value of the advice depends on the area. Someof the speakers have agreed to contribute to Harry Pence’sWeb page (http://snyoneab.oneonta.edu/~pencehe), where hewill have a special section devoted to the information fromthis symposium.

The 70th birthday of Glenn Crosby was celebrated witha one-day symposium, honoring his contribution to researchin the photochemistry and photophysics of metal complexesand to chemical education. Speakers included Michael Kasha(Florida State University, Glenn’s postdoctoral mentor), JimDemas (University of Virginia, his former graduate student),John Kenney (Eastern New Mexico University, formerpostdoc), and Alan Crosby (Boston University, son of Janeand Glenn Crosby).

The social hour and poster session on Sunday eveningwas an excellent affair that was well attended. While muchof the success had to do with the celebration of the 75th an-niversary of the Journal of Chemical Education, general posterpapers have become an important part of the program. If any-one has ideas for special poster symposia in this time slot, anexcellent attendance seems assured. Two posters were of par-ticular note. Roy Tasker from the University of WesternSydney Nepean in New South Wales, Australia has beenstudying the use of multimedia in teaching and has devel-oped a set of animations of molecules called VisChem thathe hopes will eliminate some student misconceptions. DanielPerrine from Loyola College in Maryland has developed sim-plified syntheses of the anti-depressant drugs Prozac (J. Chem.Educ. 1998, 75, 1266), Aurorix, and Zyban that are capableof being carried out in an introductory organic chemistrylaboratory. If you are looking for relevant experiments, con-sider contacting him at dmp@loyola.edu.

Tom Wildeman, is in the Department of Chemistry andGeochemistry, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO 80401;twildema@mines.edu. Frank Torre and Julianne Smist are inthe Department of Chemistry/Biology, Springfield College,Spring field, MA 01109-3797; torre@spfldcol.edu orjsmist@spfldcol.edu.

Meeting Report

Scenes from the Sunday Evening Poster Session

Ron Perkinsand MaureenScharberg

Shirley and Gil Haight and Jane and Glenn Crosby

Mary VirginiaOrna andAdrienneKozlowski

Photos by Tom Wildeman