The place of research in chemical training and chemical education

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Perspectives Lecture

The Place of Research in Chemical Training and Chemical Education Joseph F. Bunnett University of California,Santa Cruz, CA 95064 On Odoher 23.1983. in Beirut. Lebanon. 241 men of the U S . Marine corps died when thdir barracks was destroyed hv a bomb. A truck laden with exolosives had been driven itko the center of the large building that housed them, and the bomb was detonated hv the driver. A special investigative commission of the Defense Department reoorted that the Marines unit in Beirut "was not trained,-organized, staffed or supported to deal effectively with the terrorist threat in Lebanon" ( I ) . In February 1985, appointment of my colleague from UC Santa Cruz, Politics Professor Karl Lamh, as Academic Dean of the US. Naval Academy in Annapolis was announced. A local newspaper asked the founding chancellor of the Santa Cruz camous. Professor Emeritus Dean McHenry, for his comment. He expressed delight and said "With Karl's leadershin we mav soon see ensigns throwing their hats in the air aigraduation+ensigns who have received degrees in humanities like philosophy or Greek literature" (2). Soon thereafter, there appeared in the same newspaper (3) a letter to the editor from Norman Buckley of Santa Cruz, who said The Soviets must he pleased to Learn that Karl Lamh is going to introduce philosgphy, Greek literature, etc., to the curriculum of the Naval Academv. Perhaos Dean McHenrv would like to explain how a knowledge of Greek literature will strengthen our fleet. ~~~

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I had an immediate urge to respond to Mr. Buckley, hut thought that I should defer to Professor McHenry. He apparently was out of town and did not submit a letter to the editor in response. Seizing now this opportunity to respond, I will not try to guess what the Soviets thought of Karl Lamb's appointment, hut will attempt to answer Mr. Buckley's request for an explanation, taking it a t face value. The most direct answer is a quotation from the report of the investigative commission ( I ) : Recommendation: The commission recommends that the Secretary of Defense direct the development of doctrine, planning, organization,force structure,education and training necessary to defend against and counter terrorism.

I have emphasized education in this quotation and, for contrast, trained in my first quotation (above) from the same report. The ooint is that education of Marine officers helos them to protkct troops under their command. Mere training is not enough. From the studv of Greek literature they learn about peopre and how they dehave. Let us savor a few items from classical literature, that, if absorbed by military officers and incorporated into their understanding of the world, would have enabled them to foresee the possihility of the sort of attack that was made on the harracks in Beirut. 774

Journal of Chemical Education

The Slege of Masada Amone tooics in ancient historv that cadet naval officers perhapsnow study is the sadly romantic story of Masada. A Jewish rebellion against their Roman overlords in Palestine in 7OA.n. was uns"ccessful. A band of Jewish zealots, unwillina to suhmit to the n ~ l e o the f Romans, fled to the fortress of ~ a s a d awhich , was located atop a steep, rocky hill overlooking the Dead Sea. The precipitous sides of the hill made an assault on it almost impossible, hut a determined Roman commander forced slaves to build a fill or ramp, of earth and stones, that enabled Romansoldiers to walk up to the haseof the wall surmounting the precipice. The morning after the wall had first heen breached. Roman trooos entered the fortress and found everyone within i t dead. some 960 men, women. and children had chosen death rather than hecomslaves, or worse (4). ing From the storv of Masada, which hv the wav is not far from Beirut, a b o k as far as ~ e a t t l from e portland or Boston from New York, one learns that oeode zealously dedicated to a cause will sometimes sacrifice their lives for it, as did the explosives truck driver in Beirut.

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A s s a u k upon Troy and upon the Marine Barracks Homer's Iliad ( 5 ) , which concerns a long battle between the Achaeans and the Trojans, before the walls of Troy, tells that the Trojan spy Dolon was caught a t night in no-man's land by two Achaeans, Diomedes and Odysseus. "The terrified Dolon froze in his tracks and turned a pale olive with fear, and there he stood with gibbering tongue and chattering teeth till hoth of his mighty pursuers came panting up and caught his hands." Odysseus comforted him: "Cheer up, and don't even think about dying. But answer my questions, and tell me the truth." Whereupon Dolon told them a lot about the disposition of the Trojan forces and what kind of sentries thev had oosted that nieht. After that. "huee Diomedes lasheh out kith his swordand hrought it downon the neck of the Troian, severine hoth of the sinews, and right in the midst of a aord his h e a i rolled down in the dust."That was treacherous. By reading the Iliad, one learns that human beings can he perfidious. That knowledge would have been useful to the Marine officers. Perhapsmidshipmen at the Naval Academy now also read Virgil's Aeneid ( 6 ) ,which gives another version of the fall of Troy, the tale of the famous Trojan horse. The Trojans were beguiled into taking within the walls of Troy a huge wooden horse filled with Achaean soldiers; they thought it was agift. That night the Achaean soldiers crawled out, caught the Troians hv surorise. . . slew them rirht and left. and sacked the city: The iesson: deception and surprise can lie very effective in warfare. The Marine officers with responsihility to protect the Beirut barracks were doubtless well trained as to what to do in

time of war. Their difficulty seems to have been an inability to recognize that some people in Lebanon considered themselves to be a t war with the United States. A better understanding of people, especially in the eastern Mediterranean, might have helped. Education versus Training

I have drawn a distinction between education and training. It is a distinction often blurred, hut one that needs to he recoenized. not onlv as a " eeneral conceot. " . .but as it annlies .. to specific activities or programs with which professors are concerned. Education is hroad in its content and its relevance, while training tends to be narrow and focussed. Training a t the minimum "suggests exercise or practice to gain skill, endurance or facility", as the dictionary (7) says. At a higher level, training implies teaching standard responses to defined situations; thus, cadet officers learn in military training that when a company of men marching cross-countrv stoos to camo for the nieht. immediatelv guards musthe posted, a kitchen must h e established, and ditches to serve as latrines must be dug (8).Education, on the other hand, conveys a broad perspective; it has enough factual content to enable one to recognize the hroad outlines, and gives much attention to the principles that obtain. Training alone is not enough. Without sufficient education, chemists and chemical engineers may find themselves bearing responsibilit~for a disaster comparable to the Beirut barracks bombing. Bhopal

The great methyl isocyanate accident a t Bhopal comes to mind. Insofar as fault may he assigned, i t would appear to lodge with personnel of the plant at the time of the accident, many of whom were Indian. I t does not appear that the chemists and engineers of the American Union Carbide firm were guilty of any chemical or engineering malpractice; much of the trouble was apparently associated with the disrepair or disahling of equipment meant to prevent a runaway release, or with the disregard of safety procedures by plant personnel. How then might the American Union Carbide firm have done hetter? It seems possible that there had been an inadequate harmonization of American and Indian cultural views and practices; maybe better harmonization would have been achieved had the American and Indian personnel heen more fully educated, so as better to appreciate each other's cultures and values. The Bhopal accident occurred three years ago. Next year's debacle for a chemist or eneineer mav involve some different surprise factor. I t may b;only a mini-debacle, no person being injured, the only harm being the humiliation of a scientist upon the abject failure of a project. One cannot guarantee that good education will provide protection from such eventualities, hut it will help. The Arrogance of Marsh Pound

Although i t is desirable to avoid maior debacles. there is more to tke education vs. training question than that. Once during my days as an undergraduate at Reed Colleee. while several chemistry majors were sitting around one aTternoon talking of this and that, we were tending to agree that it is valuable to know the touch system for typing. Whereupon Marsh Pound (G. Marshall Pound) jolted us with a bold statement: He wasn't going tolearn to type, or to do mechanical drawing, because if he learned those skills he would he assigned work a t the typewriter or drawing table while other people were making important decisions. At the time I was shocked, but I now see his arrogant comment as an ultimate election for education over training. (Here I must confess that I learned the touch system of typing in high school, and that I have used it with great advantage in my professional work. Whether Marsh re-

mained faithful to his hold principle I do not know. I do know that he bad a successful career, hut my career has been satisfying to me, maybe despite my capability a t typing.) The Core and the Cortex of Chemical Education

Perhaos what I have said eives the imoression that education, as contrasted to training, is to be equated with substantial study of the humanities and social sciences. Not so; that is only part of it. Within the core of chemistry, there is need for breadth of acquaintance with descriptive fact and for command of basic principles. There is potential peril in excessive specialization, whether it he in vibrational spectroscopy or in synthetic organic chemistry. The ignorance implicit in overspecialization can be the cause for the collapse of a major project. Besides breadth in the core of chemistry-organic, inorganic. ~hvsical.analvtical. and biochemistrv-the well.edu. c a t e d i h e k s t heedss~me'ac~uaintance with what I will call the cortex of our discipline. By the cortex, I mean bodies of knowledge and thought that illuminate the context within which chemistry is pursued. These include the history and philosophy of science in general and chemistry in particular, the social and political contexts of chemistrv in the United States and in other countries, the organizational structure of higher education and of scientific research in the United States, and questions of values and ethics in science. What Should We Do About it7

I have drawn a distinction between training and education. I trust that you agree that the distinction is meaningful, not mere pedantry, despite the semantic confusion of these concepts that has occurred. Next. we must ask what difference should this distinction make to us in our work as teachers of chemistry? A good start would be to get the American Chemical Society to change the name of the important committee now known as the Committee on Professional Training so as to indicate its true concern for chemical education. This has been advocated before, notably by J. Arthur Campbell and A. Truman Schwartz, and by myself in an editorial in Accounts of Chemical Research (9). Not yet has our Society changed it to the Committee on Professional Education. It ought to. As teachers, we need to keep the distinction between education and training clear in our own minds. We need to evaluate various kinds of instruction, and of testing procedures. to recoenize whether thev contribute mainlv trainine or mainly education. We also need to form opinions as t i whether oarticular student clienteles.. a t narticular staees in . their s t u i y programs, need mostly training or mostly eiucation. To he specific, the trainine comnonent of a "short course" for professionals on sominew experimental methodology should probably be high, as it should also be for a two-year program to train high school graduates to become chemical technicians. (Nevertheless, the "short course" or chemical technicians' training program must give some attention to principles and thus have some characteristics of education.) On the other hand, programs meant to prepare people for careers of leadership need to consist mainly of components truly educational in character. Good chemical education must be accompanied by a certain amount of training. Students need to be taught bow to do operations that are involved in scientific work, not only because knowing those skills will prepare them to function "at the bench",iut also because effective scientific leadership requires understanding of what is involved in measurement, for example, trainingin how to use an analytical balance, a buret, an NMR spectrometer, a computer, and the like. They also need training in how to consult the chemical literature, in how to write a good report, and in how to organize a good oral presentation. Volume 65

Number 9

September 1988

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A further responsibility of teachers is to help students, a t the high school and college levels, to recognize the difference between education and training and to think which will be the better choice with resoect to their nersonal situations. Those intent on getting high-paying jobs immediately on graduation might well include a lot of training in their study programs, while those who aspire to major leadership roles a t mid-career would be well advised to emphasize education. Students also need to be informed tbat it is scarcely possible to provide a full education within the compass of four undergraduate years plus however many years of graduate work. Education needs to be pursued throughout life; one of the responsibilities of an educator is to make known some of the possibilities for continuing self-education and how they can be approached. Research Experience: Education or Tralnlng?

For a student, research experience is often partly training and partly education, but the proportions vary according to the nature of the project and the student's role in it. Undereraduate research in chemistry is often advocated on grounds that it prepares the student t o make a fast start on dissertation research as a graduate student. I t does, and that is an advantage, but to my thinking a much greater value in undergraduate research is that i t gives students an insight into the nature of knowledge. The student learns something about the uncertainty of knowledge a t the research frontier, of the unreliahilitv of some so-called "facts", and ultimately of the authority o? well-grounded observations. The uncertainties of standing a t the perimeter of knowledge occur in daily life as well; the experience gained from research a t the frontier can help a citizen to deal with uncertainty in practical affairs. The research experience of a PhD student should be strongly of education character. Some students are, however, more interested in training, and unfortunately some research professors are quite content to let them have a training experience. Some students view graduate work as an to eain skills that will he marketable: thev oooortunitv .. proudly state on their resumes their familiarity with a number of modern instruments, thinking that employers will prize them for those skills. Some research professors regard their students as high-grade laborers and press them to maximize their output of publishable data; large amounts of good data can be produced by a student who has become Drnficient a t someinstrument and who does determination after determination with it, applying pretty much the same intellectual analysis to every determination. In extreme cases the professor discourages the student from engaging in educationallv valuable activities. such as attendine seminars or taking coirses taught by other professors, wGch would reduce time a t the instrument.

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Journal of Chemical Education

I do not question the proposition that graduate students need to stick to business; the main business of each after the first year is the thesis research project. Research takes vast amounts of time. The graduate student who divides his or her time too widelv hecomes somethine of a dilettante. fails tomake fast enough &ogress to catch tke rhythm of su&essful research, and may suffer professional disadvantage because of excessive time spent a t graduate work. Thus the general practice of discouraging graduate students from taking any but carefully controlled courses in other departments is defensible. Unfortunately few efforts are made by chemistry departments to exvose their graduate students to the cortex of chemistry, to broad concepts of scientific relevance outside the main streams of modern chemical research. As a consequence, some very successful graduate students are remarkably naive about features of the world tbat may have an imoortant bearing on their scientific careers. I t would be desirable for univirsity departments consciously to sponsor events of broadenine tvoe. invitina from time to timevisitors who would he expected to c o n t r h e information or ideas sienificanr to chemistrv but outside thechannels of current1y"fashionahle research. Chemlsts Leadlng the World

Although the primary thrust of my argument is the education of students for careers in chemistry and related areas of science, I cannot refrain from noting that some well-educated chemists have Dros~eredin wider areas. Consider, for example, Michael ~ a r a d a y(who founded a branch of pbysics), Louis Pasteur (who founded microbiology), James Bryant Conant (who became President of Harvard University and later U.S. Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germ a n ~ )Irvine . Shaiu (who became Chancelor of the University o f ~ i s c o n h ,adi is on), and Margaret Thatcher (Prime Minister of the United Kinedom). I t would be unreasonable to expect our chemistry students to attain eminence in such diverseareas. but let usenable them todo so if rhev have the appropriate native talent.

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Literature Cited

1. New York Times 1985 Dec. 29.

2. Sonto Cmr Sentinel (SantaCruz. CA) 1985,Feb. 10. 8. Snnfo Crua Senfind ISanw Cruz, CA) 1985. Feb. 18. 4. Yadin,Y. Mosoda; Sfoimataky's Agency: Jerusalem, Iarael, 1966. 5 TheIiidafHomer R e 6 E, Trend.; Random Houae: New York, 1 9 6 3 : ~198. 6. The Aeneidof Virgil;Lewis, C. O..Transl.;Daubledey: Gardencity NY, 1953:Baok ii. 7. W~b~t~r'~N~luInler~fion.lOirfionogvo~theEnglishLongua#e,2nded.;Neilson,W. A,. Ed.: Meniam: Springfield, MA, 1943. 8. U. S. Army. Field Service Regulotians. 1914 (corrected to July 1,1918);Government Printing Office Washington, DC, 1918; p 118. 1 s m grateful to Axel E. Borg for loaning this bmk to me from his personal library. 9. Bunnett, J.F.Aee.Chern.Re~1986.19.261.