RACHEL SHEREMETA PEPLING, C&EN WASHINGTON

In general, new chemistry faculty are expected to learn how to become teachers on the fly. Sometimes they emulate their advisers; sometimes it's trial and error. Often, teaching labs is the only experience they have prior to taking an academic position.

According to a survey (PDF file) by the American Chemical Society Committee on Professional Training, 93% of Ph.D. recipients served as teaching assistants but only 40% taught discussion sections. An emerging consensus holds that future faculty members need better preparation for their careers.

Jerry A. Bell, senior scientist in the ACS Education & International Activities Division, sums up the need for faculty preparation programs: "Being a TA doesn't cut it. Students don't learn all the roles of faculty members such as administration, lectures, and service obligations."

The issue of preparing future faculty has gained national attention recently through programs such as Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) and the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate (CID). Chemistry departments and students are also taking notice and developing a range of programs to prepare Ph.D. graduates for a career in academia.

The Association of American Colleges & Universities and the Council of Graduate Schools started the PFF program in 1993. In 1998, ACS became involved in the third phase of the program, which focused on science and engineering departments. Five chemistry departments were selected to participate: Duquesne University, Pittsburgh; Queens College of the City University of New York; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

CID STARTED just over two years ago. The initiative partners with participating departments to "create a climate where departments think very carefully about what their goals are for their students," says George E. Walker, the project's director. The aim of the program is for departments to try new initiatives and share their assessments with other departments. Chemistry departments are currently developing their initiatives.

Brian P. Coppola, professor of chemistry at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, is creating such a program. He started the Chemical Sciences at the Interface of Education (CSIE) program and says that it is "professional neglect to not pay attention to the education of future faculty."

CSIE began about five years ago and draws from PFF and CID. The idea behind CSIE is to accomplish curriculum development much in the same way research is done--through collaborative groups. Postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduate students form groups alongside their research groups. "In exchange," Coppola says, "undergraduates get the equivalent of independent study, graduate students build this into their Ph.D. programs, and postdocs gain integrated research and teaching experience."

Students participate in brown bag lunches, seminars, and training programs. They also have to develop a research proposal for a course and curriculum development project.

Seminar and brown bag topics include designing research projects and interacting with journal editors, with funding agencies, and with their departments and universities. Coppola says the students organize these sessions "because, after all, that would be a future faculty activity."

TWO STUDENTS have graduated from the program so far. "Their laboratory chemistry chapters were by every measure a full bona fide Ph.D.," Coppola says. However, the students' theses also contained chapters on the instructional design, educational research, and assessments they had done.

If you think the curriculum development projects lengthen a student's time to degree, think again. The two graduates completed their degrees in 4.75 years. According to the ACS Committee on Professional Training survey, the national average is just over five years. The graduates also presented theses that were longer than the average thesis.

Megan Frost will be completing her Ph.D. in the next few months, after 4.5 years. She entered the CSIE program because she "was hoping to know more about what is actually involved in being a faculty member other than just standing in front of a classroom and teaching."

For her curriculum development project, Frost worked with two other students and two faculty members to redesign an analytical chemistry course. After spending a year and a half designing new experiments and discussing the flow of the course, they implemented a pilot section. The pilot incorporated some changes to lab equipment but mainly altered the philosophy of the course. For example, students are encouraged to bring true unknowns, such as water samples, to the lab and then to use techniques they've learned to analyze the sample. The following semester, all four sections of the class switched to the pilot program.

One of the most valuable lessons Frost has learned so far is time management. She had to balance the curriculum development project with her research schedule, courses, and teaching.

"I don't know yet if I'm prepared to be a faculty member," Frost says, "but I have a pretty good idea of what I'm getting into."

Nancy S. Goroff, assistant professor at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, took a unique approach to gaining chemical education experience. After completing a two-year postdoctoral appointment at Michigan State University, she decided to spend a year at the University of Michigan with Coppola to focus on chemical education.

Goroff worked with Coppola before the CSIE program formally began, but she found the experience invaluable. She recalls teaching her first class in organic chemistry as being "really easy" because she had worked with Coppola the year before developing a similar course.

The only drawback for Goroff is that she thinks her participation actually hurt her applications for academic positions. "The fact that I would choose to spend a year on education and then go to a research university was something that people found very unusual," she says. "A question I always had to address was 'How much of your time do you plan to spend on education once you get here?' "

Goroff doesn't have any regrets about her approach, however. "It was perfect because I got my research experience."

Goroff is now involved in Stony Brook's participation with CID to improve faculty preparation of her department's students.

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At those departments where there is no formal integration of faculty preparation in the curriculum, students sometimes start their own program.

Karen E. S. Phillips, now an assistant professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York, discovered that there was a lack of guidance for future faculty when she was a graduate student at Columbia University. "When you're in grad school, you're really focused on doing research, but there's nothing to prepare you for teaching a class--to know what's involved in developing a class, to get a lesson plan, how to effectively communicate the ideas to students," Phillips says. She and another student took it upon themselves to find out the information they were looking for and started the Columbia Chemistry Careers Committee (C4) in 1996.

Currently, C4 is still completely student run. Sonja Krane, a graduate student at Columbia and a member of the C4 executive committee, says career development should be ongoing regardless of whether students are entering industry or academia. C4 brings in speakers with various career backgrounds and organizes seminars, brown bag sessions, and field trips. One of the activities last year was an academic panel in which three professors at different stages in their careers spoke to students about their experiences and the tenure process.

Activities planned for the coming year include a postdoctoral panel and a grant-writing workshop.

Krane doesn't think actively participating in C4 has lengthened the time it will take to get her degree. "The time commitment for the people organizing the events is very minor."

Private foundations also provide alternative methods for future faculty development. According to Mark J. Cardillo, executive director of the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation, faculty members at undergraduate institutions have to "stay in the research game to be effective at generating potential Ph.D. chemists. They must accomplish this in general with more demanding teaching loads than faculty at research universities and without graduate students or postdocs."

In 1987, the Dreyfus Foundation began offering the Scholar/Fellow Program for Undergraduate Institutions. Instead of entering a traditional research postdoctoral program, a Ph.D. recipient (the "fellow") works with a senior faculty member (the "scholar") to gain experience in coordinating undergraduate research and teaching in the department. In return, the fellow stimulates the research program of the scholar.

Participating scholars receive a grant of $100,000 or $105,000 for a two-year period, which is applied to a stipend for the fellow as well as research and educational costs. Five grants are awarded each year. The program is open to chemistry, chemical engineering, and biochemistry departments in the U.S. that do not award Ph.D.s.

With so many resources and models to build from, the future looks brighter for future faculty.

RESOURCE

At the conclusion of Phase III of Preparing Future Faculty, the American Chemical Society decided to produce a resource book, "And Gladly Teach: A Resource Book for Chemists Considering Academic Careers." Jerry A. Bell, senior scientist in the ACS Education & International Activities Division, says the book was created because there was no single source of information for preparing future chemistry faculty.

The resource book is divided into four sections: "Deciding on an Academic Career," "Preparing for an Academic Career," "Searching for an Academic Position," and "Keeping an Academic Job." There is also an extensive bibliography of resources at the back of the book. This bibliography can also be found on the Web, where it will be continuously updated.

Bell says the book has been well received so far, with requests for multiple copies being made for courses on preparing future faculty, and in some cases, for new faculty members. Copies of the resource book are currently available for free and can be obtained by contacting graded@acs.org, or it can be accessed online at http://chemistry.org/education/pff.html.

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