Chemistry major

I agree wholeheartedly with pamela Zurer's editorial "Missed Opportunities" (Feb. 27, page 3) that the key to getting students interested and majoring in chemistry in college is to have engaged teachers with good textbooks. The use of adjuncts as instructors in freshman chemistry classes, not just as teaching assistants in laboratories, is increasingly pervasive according to academics I have spoken with.

Many of these adjuncts have little experience in teaching, have poor communication skills, and most are poorly paid. The temporary status of these adjuncts results in little or no motivation toward teaching excellence. There are exceptions, of course. Many public and private universities operate with very tight budgets, which results in a financial model that has a goal of teaching the most students for the least amount of money. Increasing enrollments with static or decreasing faculty inevitably results in more adjuncts. It is cheaper to fill teaching slots with adjuncts.

High-quality science education results from the partnership between science faculty and university administrators. This partnership requires that the administrators both understand the generally accepted models for teaching faculty who are also running successful, funded research programs, and that they be willing to commit sufficient financial resources to the enterprise. In public universities, this means that state legislators must value science education as well, since they set the budgets. ACS could help in this last respect by working at the state level or by providing assistance to state university administrators in their efforts to negotiate the budgets.

Charles M. Drain
New York City

I am an 85-year-old emeritus member of ACS. I decided to major in chemistry as a junior in high school in 1936 when I had a chemistry teacher named Vernon Culp. He was an inspiring teacher and took a real interest in his students. For example, he took me to several ACS section meetings and saw to it that I went to Oberlin as a chemistry major. There, the first-year chemistry course was taught by Harry N. Holmes and Luke Steiner. Holmes was a master of showmanship, and virtually every member of the class majored in chemistry. Unfortunately, I saw later that many of the professors of chemistry in other schools were really there to pursue their research interests, teaching courses because they had to. And they did the kind of teaching that goes with that attitude.

For the past few years, I have been reading chemistry books for people who are blind or dyslexic. The books for first-year chemistry courses appear to be efforts by the authors to show how much they know and not to give an appropriate first-year course that will also fascinate students and encourage them to continue as chemistry majors. The texts include long, tedious chapters on molecular orbits, electron levels for all the atoms well up into those with atomic numbers over 110, and quantum studies at an appropriate level for senior or grad school courses.

As a further example in one book, the short chapter on halogens had an average of one page on each of the halogens and several pages on compounds of xenon and fluorine. A couple of books went to the opposite extreme of being written at grade-school level. But until now none of the books seemed appropriate for first-year college courses.

For the past few weeks, I have been recording the new ACS text on chemistry. At last, an appropriate text. But how widely will it be used? I suspect most faculty teaching first-year courses don't give any more thought to the text they are using than to a change from the sixth to the seventh edition of the same text.

Zeno W. Wicks Jr.
Louisville

I just wanted to add my own experience to Zurer's to increase her sample to two. I did my undergraduate work at a small liberal arts college, Hope College, in Holland, Mich. Originally, I had no intention to major in the sciences, but the introductory chemistry course changed my mind. I found the material intriguing, and the small lectures and lab sections provided an open learning environment with plenty of one-on-one attention from the professors.

Not only were my classroom and laboratory experiences rewarding, I was also fortunate to be at a school with an excellent research program for undergraduates, which gave me a good foundation for graduate school. So although few may have the experience Zurer and I did, I think it's encouraging for people (especially professors) to hear that it does happen.

Jessica Case
Chicago

Zurer certainly wants what we all want−greater student success and more students interested in chemistry, but possibly for the wrong reasons. That is where I see a problem. I also chose chemistry over math because of my first-year professor. I was attracted to chemistry because it made sense to me and explained things that seemed to defy explanation.

However, I knew that it was work and not fun. I was brought up to believe that one had to work hard to be successful, and fun, if it were to be found, would be a secondary attribute. For me, chemistry was useful and, at the time, N-dimensional spaces in math were not. Despite many difficulties and the intense demands of our college professors, those of us who had the innate capacity to succeed in chemistry and a burning desire to learn were able to avoid becoming one of the dropouts because no professor would turn down that combination.

As chair of a reasonably large chemistry department, I am faced regularly with the realities of teaching science to majors and nonmajors. I can assure you that we do not have professors who can't communicate. Multiple teaching styles are used, and our office doors are always open, but we still, year after year, deal with an awful reality. About 60% of students earn C or better in each of the first two semesters. Many students have never seen a C or D before and become highly discouraged. We have tried many ways to improve performance, but none seems to lead to greatly improved results. Add to this the fact that the content in a typical science major's general chemistry course has been significantly compromised over the past 20 years.

I could not give the test today that I gave when I first started teaching 16 years ago, and my wife says the same about her high school classes. In fact, the chemistry that we learned in high school in the early 1960s was advanced compared with what many colleges teach today in general chemistry. In addition, we probably lose more majors because of the calculus and physics requirements than we lose from our own classes.

So this is where I see the problem with Zurer's lament. The problem is long growing and likely not solved by some quick-cure new textbook or retread teaching methodology. Nothing less than a sober look at the state of education in the U.S., a clear assessment of the habits and skills required for success in science, and the implementation of a feedback mechanism to rid the system of all counterproductive ideas and behaviors will be required.

James Falcone
West Chester, Pa.

I could hardly believe what I was reading when I read the paragraph in Zurer's editorial about how she got into chemistry because it is so much my own story. Thinking I would be an English major, I took chemistry my freshman year at Smith just to fulfill a science requirement. (I had taken high school chemistry but it didn't strike me as being very interesting.) College chemistry as taught by Kenneth W. Sherk was a different matter, and I found it fascinating.

After a brief introduction to organic chemistry at the end, I thought I couldn't live unless I took organic the next year. I took several organic chemistry classes in college. I remember saying to the professor as I left the natural products final, "Thanks for giving us such a fun final." The exam was a pathway-type problem-how to get from terpenes to a certain steroid. I went on to graduate school in biochemistry and became a clinical chemist. I have always been fascinated with steroid structure and now run a diagnostic lab where we measure steroids in saliva.

I, too, have never met anyone who got into chemistry this way. My son had three years of chemistry in high school, but my hopes of having another chemist in the family were lost in honors chemistry at the University of Washington where he felt all they were teaching him was Excel. He went on to major in mechanical engineering. So everything you were writing about fits my experience.
Lindsay F. Hofman

Seattle