ACS NEWS

COMMENT Peter E. Yankwich Chairman, ACS Study of

Chemistry Education

Your help needed for education study The American Chemical Society has commissioned a wide-ranging study of chemistry education by a task force working under the sponsorship of the Society Committee on Chemical Edu­cation.

Every member of the task force is widely knowledgeable and broadly ex­perienced in chemistry and in chemistry education. But no task force, no matter how large, can hope to be aware of all the significant elements of concern about the content and processes of ed­ucation in and about our discipline, nor can any task force determine realistic priorities simply by pooling its own opinions. Most especially, no task force

can match the insight and creativity of the chemistry community at large.

The members of the chemistry edu­cation task force expect much of themselves, and each one has assumed a burden of activities that is anything but light in order to advance the work of the study. The major problems seem to be self-proclaiming, though many inter­esting aspects of them may not be. Some traditional modes of solution are obvious, also—but "letting George do it" or "throwing money at it" are not likely to be either popular or effective in meeting the challenges that confront us. We need your help not only in identifying aspects of problems in chemistry edu­

cation of which we may not be aware, but in proposing elements of the solu­tions to those problems.

I ask each of you to give some thought to the manifold aspects and di­mensions of chemistry education in the U.S. today. What about it needs to be better? How can you, or we, or anybody assist that needed improvement? What specific steps might be taken? What would you do if you could? Tell us!

Please address your letters to me at the following address: Peter E. Yank­wich, Chairman, ACS Chemistry Edu­cation Study, American Chemical So­ciety, Room 810, 1155—16th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.

Chemical education study gets under way A comprehensive study on the state of chemical education in the U.S. has been started by a task force set up by the American Chemical Society's Committee on Chemical Education and chaired by Peter E. Yankwich, chemistry professor at the University of Illinois. The study is intended as a complement to a parallel study al­ready under way on U.S. chemical science and technology by a National Academy of Sciences committee under the leadership of George C. Pimentel (C&EN, Dec. 13,1982, page 38).

Both studies are expected to be conducted on a very tight schedule so that preliminary findings will be available by October, in time to in­fluence federal funding for science education and for research and de­velopment in the government's fiscal 1985 budget. And as with the Pi­mentel study, the chemical education study will produce a report to be published in 1984.

The ACS study will cost about $120,000, of which the ACS Board of Directors has committed $75,000. Additional support is being sought

Study task force membership is diverse Overall task force chairman .

Peter E. Yankwich University of Illinois, Urbana

Panel A: Chemical Education for Citizens. A. Truman Schwartz3

Norman Hackerman Janet A. Harris Donald E. Jones Stanley Kirschner John M. Mays (retired) William T. Mooney Pauline Newman Glenn T. Seaborg

Macalester College Rice University Cy Fair High School (Houston) Western Maryland College Wayne State University National Institute of Education El Camino College FMC Corp. University of California, Berkeley

Panel B: Chemical Education for Nonchemistry Professionals David Lavallee3 Hunter College Jerry A. Bell Simmons College Harry G. Hajian Community College of Rhode Island Newman A. Bortnick Rohm & Haas Ethel L. Schultz Marblehead Senior High School

(Swampscott, Mass.) Bassam Z. Shakhashiri University of Wisconsin, Madison

Panel C: Chemical Education for Professional Chemists William H. Eberhardt3 Georgia Institute of Technology Joseph T. Arrigo UOP William J. Bailey University of Maryland, College Park O. Theodor Benfey Guilford College W. Lincoln Hawkins Plastics Institute of America W. Thomas Lippincott University of Arizona Richard W. Ramette Carleton College

a Panel chairman.

42 May 2, 1983 C&EN

from foundations, industry, and government.

The purposes of the new study are to:

• Consider the manifold dimen­sions of chemical education: objec­tives, curriculum quality, standards, evaluation, R&D in education, dem­ographics, facilities, levels of support, motivation, attitudes, rewards, in­centives, faculties, and public awareness.

• Study the relationships and in­teractions among these elements in combinations such as: teacher prep­aration, public understanding of science, industry-academic collabo­ration, quality of school and college programs, instructional instrumen­tation, societal expectations of edu­cation in chemistry, and the futures of chemistry education at all levels and as a lifetime activity.

• Develop specific recommenda­tions to audiences such as Congress, state legislators, school and college governing boards, educational ad­ministrators, present and prospective chemical professionals, parents of school children, and employers of chemists.

The task force actually doing the study—named temporarily the Task Force for the Study of Chemical Ed­ucation: Status and Recommenda­tions—has 23 members from every level of chemical education and from government and industry, but nearly every member has background ex­perience in one or more sectors dif­ferent from that of present employ­ment. Membership is widely dis­tributed geographically.

Yankwich explains that the task force has risen to its size of 23 because of the necessity of achieving various representations but most importantly because the task force does not have time to initiate surveys and related investigations. It must rely heavily on the knowledge and experience of its members, on the results of other surveys and studies presently near-ing completion, and on input from concerned individuals nationwide.

The task force has formed three panels dealing with chemical education for citizens in general, for nonchemistry professionals, and for chemistry professionals. Each of the three panels is concerned with chemistry education at all levels—

Yankwich: task force exploring the reciprocity of expectations

precollege, college, postgraduate— with its physical, personal, and con­ceptual dimensions, Yankwich says. Extant data and nascent reports will be used heavily, he points out, though the study also may make use of consultants. In addition, Yankwich invites comments and other expres­sions of views from all interested persons.

As a first step in the study, virtu­ally every task force member is pre­paring a position paper identifying problems in one or several areas under one of the panels. When these are considered by the panels, the views of consultants and communi­cations from interested individuals and groups will be woven in.

Asked if any particular theme has emerged, Yankwich says that a key word seems to be "expectations," and that much of the task force's interest is directed at exploring the reciproc­ity of expectations: Society expects universities to graduate highly edu­cated people; shouldn't parents ex­pect achievement of their children in school? The nation expects the envi­ronment to be kept clean; shouldn't industry expect that society under­stand that we all are walking store­houses of chemicals? School boards expect to employ competent teachers; shouldn't taxpayers expect to make competitive teacher salaries possible? Educators expect the people to ap­preciate and support their efforts;

shouldn't they expect to have to work hard to counteract anti-intellectual-ism, to develop understanding, and dispel ignorance?

A small writing committee will draft the interim report based on deliberations of the task force as a whole. This report then will be used as a focus for communication be­tween the task force and other con­cerned persons and groups.

According to Yankwich, one of the unusual characteristics of the draft report is to be that it will be written for a very small audience—the task force itself. As Yankwich explains, "Every major target audience for the results of our thinking considers educational matters in a different way. We'll get no place attempting to accommodate that diversity in a sin­gle compact report. So, we are going to write the report first to impact ourselves; then we will have a chance to talk things over, to argue with each other, to persuade and be per­suaded, to establish consensus. Then we can find out how others react to our thinking. And finally, having considered those reactions, we can prepare a final report that can be used as the source document for perhaps a dozen daughter reports, each addressed to a specific audience, each covering the matters of greatest interest and moment to that audi­ence." D

Computer division gets lab automation group A Subdivision of Laboratory Auto­mation has been formed within the ACS Division of Computers in Chemistry. Its purpose is to recognize the growing trend toward the in­corporation of small computers into laboratory instruments and to ad­dress the specific interests and con­cerns of the designers and users of such instrumentation in all branches of chemistry.

Persons interested in affiliating with the subdivision, or desiring additional information, should con­tact the subdivision chairman, Joseph G. Liscouski III, Digital Equipment Corp., Mail Station MR2-3/M84, 1 Iron Way, Marlboro, Mass. 01752; telephone (617) 467-4706. D

May 2, 1983 C&EN 43

Issuance of Priestley stamp celebrated ACS president Fred Basolo addresses crowd of about 700 who gathered at Joseph Priestley's home in Northumberland, Pa., April 13 to mark the issuance by the U.S. Postal Service of a stamp honoring Priestley (C&EN, April 4, page 29). The stamp marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of the English and American chemist who discovered oxygen and several other important gases. Other participants in the First Day of Issue program, seated directly behind Basolo, are (from left) Lester Kieft, chairman of the Priestley Stamp Committee and professor of chemistry, emeritus, at Bucknell University; George F. Shuman, postmaster of New York City, who presented commemorative albums of the stamp to dignitaries at the ceremony; and Lamar D. Kerstetter, postmaster of Northumberland, Pa. The event was spon­sored by the Susquehanna Valley Section of ACS and Bucknell University. A phi­latelic souvenir card, containing pictures of Priestley and his home and a first day of issue cancellation of the stamp, is available from the American Institute of Chemists for $4.00. Orders should be directed to AIC Priestley, 7315 Wisconsin Ave., Suite 525E, Bethesda, Md. 20814.

Downloading of CAS database authorized Chemical Abstracts Service has adopted a "downloading" policy that permits organizations to capture in­formation electronically from CAS's database and retain it permanently for internal searching and reuse. For payment of a single annual fee, cus­tomers are entitled to capture elec­tronically up to 50,000 citations from the CAS database in a calendar year. Once captured, the information may be retained and used indefinitely without further payment to CAS.

CAS defines a citation as any or all of the information in its database as­sociated with a single document, in­cluding the abstract, index entries, and the structure diagrams and other identifying information for chemical substances referenced in the docu­ment. The information may be cap­tured from any of the on-line services

that offer access to CAS files, or it may be extracted by the customer from CAS's printed or microform services.

"With the increasing use of mi­crocomputers, many organizations wish to create their own databases containing selected CAS information for internal searching," CAS mar­keting director Ronald G. Dunn ex­plains. "Our policy is intended to permit reasonable downloading and reuse of our information with mini­mum requirements for record keep­ing and reporting."

Authorizing downloading is the latest in a number of steps CAS has taken in the past several years to permit freer use of its information. Since 1981, CAS has allowed tempo­rary electronic capture of informa­tion retrieved in on-line searches for reformatting or for combining it with data from other sources. Last year, CAS eased restrictions on making copies from its printed and micro­

form services for use within sub­scribing organizations.

The CAS downloading policy re­stricts physical storage and use of the captured information to a single site, but allows remote access to the in­formation by a customer's divisions or subsidiaries. CAS requires pay­ment of additional fees when infor­mation is distributed outside a cus­tomer's organization or is reproduced in multiple copies of bulletins or other publications.

Downloading licenses are granted on a calendar-year basis and are re­newable each Jan. 1. An organization that does not renew its license will be entitled to retain and use previously captured data as long as conditions of the original license are met.

CAS is offering licenses for the remainder of 1983 for $3000 to orga­nizations that subscribe to Chemical Abstracts and $6000 to nonsubscrib-ers. The license fee for 1984 will be $4000 for CA subscribers and $8000 for nonsubscribers. D

Abstracts available on CAS Online Abstracts of more than 3.6 million scientific papers and patents and Chemical Abstracts index entries for more than 5.7 million documents published since 1967 now can be re­trieved and displayed on-line through Chemical Abstracts Service's CAS Online search service. The ab­stracts and index entries can be dis­played as part of the result of a search of the CAS Online file of chemical substance information or retrieved by entering specific CA abstract numbers in the system.

Abstracts available for display in­clude essentially all of the more than 3 million abstracts published in CA since mid-1975 plus a limited num­ber of abstracts published between 1967 and mid-1975. All bibliographic citations, keyword index terms from the weekly CA issue indexes, and subject and substance index entries from the semiannual volume indexes since 1967 currently are available for retrieval. CAS will expand the CAS Online service later this year to allow searching of the bibliographic ref­erences and index entries. D

44 May 2, 1983 C&EN