Graduate Education in the Chemical Sciences Issues for the 21st Century: Report of a Workshop (2000) / Chapter Skim
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Opinions vary widely about whether graduate education in the chemical sciences needs to change, ranging from an emphasis on not fixing what is not broken to insistence on a complete restructuring. Regardless of one's position on this spectrum, similar questions arise: · What are the criteria for evaluating the quality of graduate education, and who establishes these criteria?
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The discussion was organized into four sessions that represented a nearly arbitrary framing of the topic: first, a general overview; second, viewpoints on existing circumstances; third, perspectives of and on graduate students; and fourth, some alternative organizational structures. In capturing the presentations and the discussion, these proceedings are intended to broaden the dialog and catalyze mechanisms for participants and others to improve graduate education in or through their own institutions.
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addressed several tensions that exist today in chemistry graduate education: the pull toward interdisciplinarity, the time to achieve a degree, and the intellectual exchange between academia and industry. He questioned whether interdisciplinarity has become too institutionalized: Has institutionalizing interdisciplinarity simply provided a way of making it financially attractive to look beyond traditional bounds rather than increasing the intellectual interactions?
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discussed various issues that affect graduate education. These ranged from the effects of advances in information technology on how science is conducted to the special obligations of research scientists to K-12 education as a result of a "covenant with the nation." To help explore improvements that can be made to enhance graduate education, she also discussed topics related to funding, such as reasons for federal government support of basic research and alternative ways in which graduate students could be supported.
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The three areas that deserve attention are undergraduate-level research experiences, advising and mentoring, and ensuring that students have an adequate foundation in chemical fundamentals. He also argued that graduate programs can help improve undergraduate education by instituting teaching fellow or faculty apprentice programs to enhance the teaching assistantship experience for those who ultimately maY pursue a career as a faculty member at an undergraduate institution.
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focused on how graduate education in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Kansas has evolved over the past 30 years and described how a National Institutes of Health predoctoral training grant was used to bridge the gap between traditional disciplines. In many cases, reduction of the gap has been driven by the biotechnology revolution, which demands interactions between various disciplines (e.g., chemistry and biology or pharmacy and engineering)
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