Chemical Education in American Institutions

0 MOUNT HOLYOHE COLLEGE

EMMA PERRY CARR, Professor Emeritus Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts

IN A LIBERAL arts college for women, like Mount Holyoke, the primary function of the college is under- graduate education and the teacher's first responsi- bility is to the undergraduate students. The graduate work leading to the M.A. degree is offeredprimarily for the graduate assistants of the department, and the re- search activities of members of the staff are supported and encouraged largely because these contribute di- rectly or indirectly to their effectiveness as teachers.

The curriculum of the liberal arts college has been much under discussion recently and Mount Holyoke, in common with so many educational institutions, has just come through a long period of such discussion. This resulted in some revision in the amount and char- acter of the required work and in certain phases of what might be called the mechanics of the curriculum but the fundamental educational pattern remains much the same. Opinions may differ on many points in con- nection with the curriculum of a liberal arts college but there is unanimity in the basic aim of preserving a balance between general education and specialized work in a particular field. The principles which deter- mine what and how much shall be included in the "general" education are the responsibility of the faculty as a whole, whereas the individual departments are left free to make the requirements in their own and related

departments for the specialized work with only certain minimum requirements imposed by the faculty. There shall be not less than forty-eight semester h o u r s 4 0 per cent of the total requirement for the degree in the field of concentration, with not less than twenty-four hours in the major department. To avoid over- specialization in one department there is a limit of not more than thirty-six hours in a single department unless under special conditions, such .as honor work. The faculty hopes in this way to avoid the twin dangers of too much scattering on the one hand and too great specialization on the other, and this is substantially the framework within which the department of chemistry has organized its work for more than a decade.

In an institution such as this, chemical education is not and cannot be a highly specialized technical course of training for specific types of chemical work. It seeks rather to lay the foundation in chemistry and the related work-physics, mathematics, and German- upon which a student may build her specialized pro- fessional work. The number of courses which a stu- dent takes is less and the actual material covered is more limited than is ordinarily the case with an under- graduate in a university or technical school, yet when our students go to graduate school, medical school, or industrial laboratory they must compete successfully

Propom.d Chemistry-Physics Building (Physics bui ld ing at bit)

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with students of more extensive training. The mini- good teaching assistants and in giving to the course and mum requirements of the American Chemical Society the department a certain unity of purpose. Each of us Committee on Professional Training represent the is responsible for one of the more advanced courses in

the department but this common interest in the ele-

Vacuum Spectrograph

maximum number of hours which our curriculum allows in one department. It is our problem, therefore, to de- vise ways and means whereby we can provide the stu- dent with the most effective scientific training within the limited time. It is an ever-present problem with no completely successful solution to report, but it may be of value to review briefly some of the factors which in my judgment have been influential in shaping our policy.

Probably the greatest single advantage that the col- lege offers in comparison with the university is that of small classes and a very natural and easy relationship between student and instructor. It has been our policy for many years to have the most experienced teachers in the beginning courses. Our laboratory sections do not exceed fifteen students to an instructor or assistant and this laboratory teaching is never left to graduate assistants alone. There are ordinarily about one hun- dred students in the beginning course and around fifty in the course for students with adequate high-school or preparatory-school training. Each of the members of the department takes a laboratory section of three hours and one discussion class per week in one of the two freshman courses. These small sections meet together twice a week for lectures and the general plan for the course is the lecturer's responsibility, but the courses are very definitely cooperative affairs. The weekly general chemistry conference, where all-gradu- ate assistants and members of the faculty-discuss the problems of the past week's work and the plans for the next assignment, have been invaluable aids in training

mentary work brings us all in touch with the younger students and gives to the work a human interest and an intellectual stimulus which is difficult to attain where chemistry must be taught by mass production methods.

Expensive of skilled personnel, yes, but this has been met in considerable part by a department organization that frees the teaching staff from the time-consuming care of equipment, preparation of the laboratory, and the general mechanics of laboratory management. That was an idea taken over from Dr. Alexander Smith at Chicago and later at Columbia when he turned over the laboratory "business" to Dr. Thomas B. Frees. Our department has an Assistant Director, who had majored in chemistry and has made laboratory manage- ment her profession. This means that the teaching staff is relieved of this hehind-the-scenes work and has made possible the continuation of some research with our fairly heavy teaching schedules.

For.more than twenty years Mount Holyoke has had a system of general examinations which are given to seniors a t the end of their college course. This is an all-day examination which covers all the work of the maior subiect. Althoueh the denartment has never felt satisfied .with the types of examination which we have given, nor with the results, for that matter, yet the examinations are undoubtedly valuable to the students as encouraging a more mature correlation of their differ- ent courses and as an incentive to more thorough work.

Another factor which has had a marked influence on the quality of our undergraduate work is what is known as Honors Work, the system by which a student whose general college average at the end of her junior year is 85 per cent may, with department approval, undertake independent work on a special problem during the senior year. Since physical chemistry is a senior course and the department strongly advises the course in qualita- tive organic analysis as a prerequisite for honors work. the time for special problems is limited. This varies from six to nine hours,but these hours may be in excess of the 30-hour major as limited by faculty action. Each problem is under the supervision of a member of the faculty and is often a segment of a larger research project to which graduate students and other members of the department may contribute. The extensive study of unsaturated hydrocarbons and, more recently, a project of the Office of Scientific Research and De- velopment in the synthesis of new antimalarials are ex- amples of the larger problems to which the honor stu- dents have contributed. The number of students who work for honors varies from year to year. This year there are nine; rarely are there less than four. The value is not alone to the student in getting this intro- duction to research methods; she prepares a carefully documented report of her work in the form of an honors paper which is bound and kept in the department li- brary and takes a special honors examination. There

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is a very real value also to the members of the depart- ment in that the direction of honors problems and Masters theses keeps us alert and interested in pro- ductive research.

The department has de- veloped over the years a method of advising major students in their junior and senior years in the election of courses, which is again rather expensive of time but is possible where we have had from fifteen to twenty-five major students from each class. Insteadof delegating the advising to one or two members of the department, we get together as a group around the li- brary table and twice a year discuss with each stu- dent individually her plan ofwork. Theopinionswhich are expressed may some- times b e conflicting. So much the better for the stu- dent, as it must be her own decisionin the end. Our staff has represented widely different backgrounds both in the undergraduate and graduate training; Vassar, Mount Holyoke, B~ Mawr, Randolph-Macon have had representatives over a long period of years. And it is a notable list of university teachers-Alexander Smith, J. U. Nef, William McPherson, Wilder Bancroft, Julius Stieglitz, E. P. Xohler, and T. B. Johnson, to mention but a few-whose methods and inspiration have been handed on to the young Mount Holyoke chemists.

The number of undergraduate courses which the department offers has been reduced to a minimum as a part of the college policy, and the general nature of the courses conforms to the standards set by the American Chemical Society Committee. According to the new curriculum of the college the basis of the beginning course is to be broadened so that it may better serve the student's general education and cultural development, but it piill continue to lay the foundation for advanced work in the department. For freshmen whose score in the College Board Achievement Test in Chemistry and the Mathematical Aptitude Test is satisfactory there is a course in qualitative analysis which lays special stress on the theoretical principles.'

The second semester of quantitative analysis departs from the usual procedure in giving the student an intro- duction to micro methods and some experience in instru- mental analysis. The crowded condition of our physi- cal'chemistry laboratory with thirty-one students this year has necessitated the use of small-scale apparatus

High-Prssaure Hydrogenation Apparatus

for several of the experiments. The results have been so satisfactory that hereafter these will be used by choice rather than necessity. The year course in bio- chemistry is given in the Department of Physiology by an organic chemist and there is a prerequisite of three years of chemistry. This course therefore meets the requirements of the A. C. S. Committee without adding hours to our limited major. Inasmuch as the college does not offer specialized vocational training such as home economics there is no demand for courses which are directed toward special needs .of other departments.

The graduate work for the M.A. degree was intro- duced as early as 1910 with the primary purpose of making the assistantships in the department more at- tractive to able students. It was something of an ex- periment for an undergraduate college a t that time but has become a very general practice and we count it one of our most successful ventures. Of the 63 young women who have taken the M.A. degree in chemistry from Mount Holyoke in the last quarter century, 25 have continued graduate work and now hold the Ph.D. degree. About one-third were graduates of institutions other than ours. This record alone would justify the policy but its by-product in the reaction on students and staff has been fully as valuable. Forty-three of our major students of the last thirty-five years have taken the Ph.D. degree in chemistry and since 1918 rarely a year has passed without one or more publica- tions from the department. These are more or less con- crete evidences of the influence of even so limited an amount of graduate work. The more intangible values

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t o the department and the college cannot be so easily evaluated.

According to our plan of work the assistant gives half of her time to department work and half to gradu- ate study. Four graduate seminars are offered-in thermodynamics, advanced physical, advanced organic, and physical chemistry applied to organic problems- and students very frequently fulfill a part of their re- quirement by advanced work in a related department, most frequently physics. The course in thermo- dynamics is required of all Master's candidates and ordmarily they take two of the other courses. The content of these courses varies somewhat from year to year and includes recent work and literature search whenever possible. The major portion of the graduate student's time is given to experimental work on her special problem, the report of which is presented in the form of a thesis which must be approved by the depart- ment and the Graduate Committee of the college. The requirements are usually completed in the two years of half-time work. At the end, the candidate must pass a written examination in her graduate courses and an oral one on her thesis.

The research interests of the department include both synthetic organic and physical chemistry, together with a combination of the two fields of work. The study of hydantoin derivatives extended over many years and a number of papers with student collaborators have been published. Studies in the absorption spectra of organic compounds were begun in the department in 1914. This type of physical measurement was undertaken in order that we might use it in connection with the syn- thetic organic research and thus give to the young graduate student as varied a training as possible, and at the same time that we might become skilled ourselves in

the use of a new physical tool which gave promise of wide application.

As the work progressed it seemed advisable to under- take a systematic study of the characteristic absorption of a single chromophoric group, the carbon-carbon double bond. This investigation necessitated the preparation of very highly purified hydrocarbons and examination of their absorption spectra in the near ultraviolet with the quartz spectrograph and later in the far ultraviolet with the fluorite vacuum spectrograph. This extensive study of simple hydrocarbons has con- tinued for almost twenty years and has been carried on as a group research project in which an organic chemist, a physicist, and two physical chemists have collabo- rated. It offered particularly favorable problems for honors and graduate s~udents and our library has more than fifty graduate theses and honor's papers which report work in this field. In addition, there have been thirty-five publications by members of the staff and student collaborators which cover different phases of the investigation.

Group research in a small department adds much to the zest and interest of the work. Research de- velops slowly with the brief time a t one person's dis- posal when so much time and energy must go to teach- ing, but i t can repreaent a worth-while contribution to science if there can be the cooperative effort of an enthusiastic group.

As is so often true, when a research project gets under way it is then possible to obtain financial support and this investigation has been aided greatly by grants from the National Research Council and the Rockefeller Foundation. The absorption spectra of .organic com- pounds in the far ultraviolet wave was almost com- pletely unexplored and new techniques and new meth- ods had to be developed. Equipment for this work in our laboratory was made possible through these grants. This theoretical investigation of the hydrocarbons was discontinued during the war for a group research project in organic chemistry in connection with the govern- ment's antimalarial program.

The laboratory in which we work is old and far from adequate for our needs. It is a serious fire hazard, as fireproof buildings were not deemed necessary or pos- sible when this was built in 1892. Our department li- brary and spectrographic laboratories are housed tem- porarily in the near-by fireproof biological laboratory. The physics wing of a new physics-chemistry building was built in 1931 and this gave us additional much- needed space in the old building. But the number of students taking chemistry has grown tremendously and the scope of the work increases constantly. Plans have been drawn for the completion of the building and it is hoped that this may not be too long delayed.

Since its beginning in 1837 Mount Holyoke has always had a decidedly scientific trend in its curriculum. It is indeed remarkable that a t that time seven sciences out of a total of twenty-three subjects were required of all students before graduation. Mary Lyon was her- self an early teacher of chemistry and introduced indi-

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vidual laboratory work for the students that very first method of teaching chemistry in which the students year. Professor Amos Eaton a t Rensselaer Institute perform certain of the experiments themselves." One in Troy was credited with being the .first to use the hundred and ten years later there are new and unusual laboratory method of teaching, and in preparation for methods to be learned and opportunities that are open her teachmg Miss Lyon had spent a term a t Reusselaer, to women in chemistry which are far beyond the wildest where she went, as she said, "to learn a new and unusual dreams of our Founder.