Campaign To Save Sussex Chemistry Intensifies

Members of the chemistry department at the University of Sussex are inviting companies to pledge donations of between $2,000 and $20,000 per year for the next five years to save and support their department.

The initiative follows the university's proposal, announced last month, to reduce the number of academic staff in its chemistry department from 14 to seven, change the name of the department to the department of chemical biology, and abandon chemistry degree programs.

The fund-raising project will take the form of a consortium of companies. "The aim of this initiative is to stave off the threat of closure of the department and demonstrate that chemistry at Sussex is a center of excellence that can generate external support and be financially sustainable in the mid- to long-term," says department head Gerry A. Lawless, who is leading the fund-raising group. "We have set up an advisory board consisting of prominent leaders in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. They have given us valuable advice on the viability of this venture and some practical hints on the best way to proceed."

The group aims to raise at least $2 million to appoint and employ two lecturers and one professor for the next five years. "Increasing faculty numbers is central to our strategy for the long-term future of chemistry at Sussex," Lawless says. The university's academic body, the Senate, and its governing body, the Council, will meet on May 12 and 15, respectively, to decide whether to accept the strategy.

The initiative has a wider context, according to Lawless. "Chemistry in the U.K. is in crisis, due in no small part to the underfunding of lab-based subjects by the Higher Education Funding Council in England," he tells C&EN. "The consortium aims to demonstrate to the U.K. government the strength of feeling within the chemical community at the closure of yet another chemistry department. Higher education in chemistry is a precious national resource, but we have reached a point where there is now a very serious threat to the supply of chemistry graduates for the science-based industries and for school teaching. If we continue to close chemistry departments, this calamitous slope of national decline as a serious producer economy will become steeper and considerably more slippery."

The threatened closure has brought cries of protest from eminent chemists around the world, such as Ronald Breslow of Columbia University. Chemistry departments are as fundamental to the core of universities as are history and literature departments, he notes in a statement posted on the Save Chemistry @ Sussex website (www.scas.streamlinenettrial.co.uk/public_html/SCAS/index.htm). There is no major or even minor U.S. university that would dream of damaging its chemistry department, Breslow adds.

Chemistry departments in the U.S. are central to the university mission partly because they do a huge amount of service teaching to students who are not chemists, Breslow tells C&EN. "British chemistry departments should consider expanding this service role to enhance their general importance and to minimize the chance of closure," he suggests.