Title : NSF 94-19 Innovation and Change in the Chemistry Curriculum Type : Report NSF Org: EHR / DUE Date : December 31, 1993 File : nsf9419 _____________________________________ Division of Undergraduate Education Directorate for Education and Human Resources National Science Foundation December, 1993 INNOVATION AND CHANGE IN THE CHEMISTRY CURRICULUM Co-Chairs: Seyhan Ege University of Michigan Orville Chapman University of California, Los Angeles May 7-8, 1992 Washington, DC DEDICATION On behalf of the participants of this workshop, we wish to dedicate this report to the memory of two people, Paul Gassman and Kenneth Hancock, who have contributed greatly to our profession and who provided leadership and wisdom during our deliberations. Orville Chapman Seyhan Ege TABLE OF CONTENTS Workshop agenda ---------------------------------------- Executive Summary ---------------------------------------- Panel A - Fostering Instructional Improvement By Galvanizing the Chemical Community ---------- Panel B - Bringing Research Closer to the Classroom --- - Panel C - Assessing Instructional Innovation; Improving the Preparation of Chemistry Teachers; Assessing Student Learning ------------------ -- Panel D - Stimulating Instructional Innovations and Improving the Speed, Quality, Convenience, and Reliability of Dissemination ----------------- Panel E - Bringing Cutting-Edge Technology in Computers and Instruments into the Classroom ------------ Presentations by the Co-Chairs Orville L. Chapman ----------------------------- Seyhan N. Ege ----------------------------------- Plenary Lecture Science Education, Who Needs It? Norman Hackerman -------------------------- Workshop Participants ------------------------------------------ WORKSHOP ON INNOVATION AND CHANGE IN THE CHEMISTRY CURRICULUM DuPont Plaza Hotel 1500 Rhode Island Avenue Washington, DC May 7-8, 1992 Thursday, May 7, 1992 8:00am Registration 9:00am Introductory Remarks: Robert Watson, Director, Division of Undergraduate Education Kenneth Hancock, Director, Division of Chemistry 9:20am Colloquium Agenda and Goals Orville Chapman, Workshop co-chair, University of California Los Angeles Seyhan Ege, Workshop co-chair, University of Michigan 10:00am Break 10:15am Discussion Groups Panel A -Fostering Instructional Improvement By Galvanizing the Chemical Community Panel B -Bringing Research Closer to the Classroom Panel C -Assessing Instructional Innovation; Improving the Preparation of Chemistry Teachers; Assessing Student Learning Panel D -Stimulating Instructional Innovations and Improving the Speed, Quality, Convenience, and Reliability of Dissemination Panel E -Bringing Cutting-Edge TEchnology in Computers and Instruments into the Classroom Noon Lunch 1:15pm Plenary short presentations Introduction by Co-Chairs Robert Kozma - Models for innovation and change. Douglas Lapp - A functioning institute for science at the precollege level. James Spencer - ACS Division of Chemical Education Task Force on General Chemistry. John Moore - Economics of new texts, media, and instruments. 3:00pm Break 3:15pm Group Discussions 5:30pm Reception 6:30pm Dinner 7:30pm Norman Hackerman, University of Texas "Science Education, Who Needs It?" Friday, May 9, 1992 8:25am Discussion group one page summaries 8:30am Models for change in other disciplines Engineering Coalitions Calculus REform Physics IUPP project 9:45am Break 10:00am Discussion groups Noon Lunch 1:15pm Concluding Plenary Session Reports from Discussion groups Remarks by Co-Chairs 3:00 Adjournment "...the culture of our community must change to value contributions to education in the same way it values research. " Panel A: Fostering Instructional Improvement by Galvanizing the Chemical Community "We urge you (the faculty) to bring research into your classrooms by enabling students to experience themselves as professionals by designing laboratory courses to parallel research, including the use of modern instrumentation to generate data in the solution of real problems, and emphasis on both individual and team research, (and by) allowing time in the design of the laboratory for students to fail, to learn from their mistakes and to repeat experiments until meaningful results are obtained. " Panel B: Bringing Research Closer to the Classroom Panel C. Assessing Instructional Innovation; Improving the Preparation of Chemistry Teachers; Assessing Student learning. "Our examinations focus on the kinds of questions for which there is a single correct answer, rather than those for which the correct answer is unknown, or which have more than one correct answer. As a result we construct an arbitrary boundary between what we do as scientists and what we ask our students to do in science courses... All too often the effect of assessment is so powerful that it drives instruction, trapping us in a particular curriculum because we know how to assess that mode of student learning and no other. " "In chemistry, the current methods of dissemination of instructional improvements and innovations are slow, ineffective and inadequate ... Chemical education needs both new joumals and electronic dissemination. " "New technology opens access to vast data bases and information systems at relatively low cost, but computational power has not impacted, by and large, the way we teach and the way we communicate with each other." Panel D: Stimulating Instructional Innovations and Improving the Speed, Convenience, and Reliability of Dissemination "New technology opens access to vast data bases and information systems at relatively low cost, but computational power has not impacted, by and large, the way we teach and the way we communicate with each other. " Panel E. Bringing Cutting-Edge Technology in Computers and Instruments into the Classroom EXECUTIVE SUMMARY As our economic base changes from manufacturing to information, we will experience radical changes in many social structures. Of such structures, few are more conservative than education. Our educational methods, rooted in the early middle ages, cannot serve the dawning information age. Chemical education, as all education, must metamorphose to meet the challenges of the future. This workshop on "Innovation and Change in Chemical Instruction" was convened to discuss how innovation arises in the chemical education community and how the creativity that goes into innovation by individual faculty members or departments can be communicated to and adopted by other faculty for the renewal of education in the discipline in the same ways that research in chemistry leads to the intellectual renewal of chemists. Five panels led by outstanding chemical educators, representing two-year colleges, four-year colleges, comprehensive universities, and research universities, considered key issues such as fostering innovations, incorporating more research into both lecture and laboratory courses, assessing student learning and innovations, communicating innovations, and the new technology that is necessary for effective change. Each of the panels put forth a series of recommen- dations, which are presented after this summary. Despite the diversity of the panels and the differences in their charges, common concerns emerged. We make five major recommendations to institutions of higher learning, professional societies, and to the National Science Foundation. 1. In rewarding and encouraging faculty, the value placed on teaching must be increased. Our society has little respect for those who teach. Nowhere is this fact more evident than in our large research institutions. The University of California faculty in rejecting the Pister Report ('Report ofthe Universitywide Task Force on Faculty Rewards, K.S. Pister, Chair, June 26, 1991, Office of the President, University of California, Oakland, California), which sought to equate teaching and research in faculty evaluation, emphatically made the point: research dominates teaching. But our universities are not alone; consider the number of research awards and the number of education awards administered by the American Chemical Society. We have a national science medal, but we have no national science education medal. We have to face the facts; we do not value teaching. Our reward structure shows just how little we value teaching. If we want educational innovation, we must make clear statements to the world that we value highly educational innovators. We call on the American Chemical Society to establish a major award for innovation in education. We further suggest that this award be named for Professor Paul Gassman. We call on the President and the Congress to establish a national science education medal. 2. We must give all of our students, whether they will become scientists or not, a sense of professionalism and involvement, an appreciation of the scientific method and how it impacts on public discourse, and an understanding of research and the excitement of exploration and discovery. Our introductory chemistry courses have focused on facts and exercises. We do not incorporate into these courses the crucial issues that involve our students as citizens, issues where questions of science, people, economics, ethics, and policy meet. Nor do students in our first year courses get a sense of the vital and growing nature of our discipline. Modern tools that give students access to computer data bases, molecular modeling, and computational chemistry offer the means for student exploration and discovery. We recommend that faculty open up their classrooms and laboratories to problembased instruction that allows students to participate in the kind of open-ended consideration of data that characterizes our research. As an extension of this, all undergraduates should have the opportunity to do research, including oral and written presentation of their results. We urge the National Science Foundation to support initiatives that develop means of interactive learning for students. These would involve development of new software and laboratory experiments, and faculty enhancement programs. 3. The methods we use for assessing our students and our teaching must change so that they no longer focus our courses on the lowest levels of learning and so that they provide us with the insight into our methods and our tools that we need to drive change. In chemistry we test for facts and exercises. Our tests probe neither problem-solving skills nor understanding, and therefore focus our courses on the two lowest levels of learning in Bloom's taxonomy of learning (Bloom, B.S., editor, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives I: Cognitive Domain, David McKay, New York, NY, 1956): rote learning and exercises. This focus robs our courses of research, inquiry, exploration, and discovery. Our assessment problems do not end with student assessment. Our courses, our methods, our tools also need assessment. We do not have the insights we need to achieve fundamental change, and yet we resist expert and independent assessment of our courses. Why? Experts constantly assess our research: every paper, every proposal. Constant assessment hones our research skills. Change in methods of student assessment is long overdue. We recommend that we bring expert assessment of both our students and ourselves to chemical education. We need to have cognitive scientists, specialists in learning, who know how to probe and evaluate student learning, attitudes, understanding, and problem-solving skills, study our courses and our methods. 4. We must have new tools for the dissemination of innovation in chemical education. Chemical research has devised many vehicles for rapid, thorough communication of results. Only one journal, the Journal of Chemical Education, which currently takes more than a year for publication after accepting an article, serves chemical education exclusively. No vehicle for rapid communication of innovation exists. Important information in the allied fields of cognitive science and pedagogical research, published in journals such as the Journal of College Science Teaching, the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, and Cognition and Instruction, also must be made more accessible to the chemical community. Chemical education must learn from chemical research the value of thorough, rapid, peer-reviewed publication. We recommend the creation of new tools for the rapid dissemination of information about pedagogy and innovation, such as: electronic networks carrying publications, and bulletin boards. newsletters with up-todate news in cognitive science and pedagogical research. a review journal that summarizes and evaluates approaches to a particular topic, concept, or problem. a series that would do for chemical education what Organic Syntheses and Inorganic Syntheses have done for the research community. 5. We must create a new infrastructure that enables use of modern methods and tools in our curriculum. We cannot overstate the extent to which our weak infrastructure in science education limits instruction. Many faculty members still have no access to electronic mail and a national network. The capacity to transmit digital multimedia programs rapidly and interactively opens up the possibility of sharing innovations from one end of the country to the other. Instruction that engages students at all levels in the processes of discovery requires modern instrumentation, and computers that deliver interactive multimedia programs that challange and stimulate them. Only with such tools will we involve students in the exploration and discovery that characterizes modern science; test tubes and beakers no longer suffice. We call on the President and the Congress to fund and imple- ment the broad-band, fiber-optic network that the President has proposed. We call on academic officers to put computers on every faculty member's desk and to fund computers for student use. We call on the National Science Foundation and other funding agencies to recognize that we need modern tools and the infrastructure to support them, as well as mechanisms for updating the faculty on the use of new tools and methods of modern science. PANEL A FOSTERING INSTRUCTIONAL IMPROVEMENT BY GALVANIZING THE CHEMICAL COMMUNITY PANEL MEMBERS: Arthur Ellis (panel chair), Oren Anderson, Terry Collins, Edward Mellon, James Spencer, Zvi Szafran, Albert Thompson, Jr., Raymond Turner, Ann Walker Resolved: With concerted action, the chemical community can enhance the quality and impact of undergraduate instruction. Analysis: The quality of science education in general and of introductory college chemistry courses in particular are matters of national concern. The chemistry community is committed to providing undergraduate chemistry courses that truly meet the needs of all undergraduate students. Our students need and are entitled to introductory chemistry courses that provide an appreciation for chemistry as a living scientific discipline and foster an understanding of the process of scientific inquiry. We are committed to establishing a dialogue with students that will identify their needs and will enable us to be more effective teachers. The chemistry community must educate all of our fellow citizens about the rational quality of the scientific method, about the excitement of chemistry and about its importance to our economy as well as to our advancement in technology and medicine and to our thinking about the environment. We must develop effective ways to prepare adequately those students who will enter technical careers while ensuring that students who will not continue in the sciences develop an appreciation for the relevance of chemistry to their lives and for the nature of scientific inquiry. An infrastructure comparable to the one that enables our national research enterprise to bring forth innovation is needed to ensure a similar systematic development and dissemination of ideas for educational improvement in all segments of the higher education community. In addition, the culture of our community must change to value contributions to education in the same way it values research. These considerations lead us to the following recommendations: To Chemistry Faculties: We recommend that you establish a culture that recognizes the critical importance of providing a high-quality undergraduate education in chemistry to all students by: o working with each other to develop consensus for reform, including timetables for achieving curricular objectives. o supporting individual faculty initiatives in improving introductory chemistry courses including recognition of such contributions as part of tenure and post-tenure evaluations. o devising objective measures of progress in achieving curricular goals. o serving as positive role models for junior faculty, teaching assistants, graduate and undergraduate students in demonstrating concern for the quality of undergraduate education. To Chemistry Department Chairs: We recommend that you encourage innovation by individual faculty members and aid in the dissemination of successful curricular reform experiments by: o showing concern for the quality of courses for both majors and non-majors and making sure that they engage the collective attention and talents of the department. o ensuring that resources and rewards are available for faculty efforts in improving undergraduate courses, including recognition that such efforts take time and that rewards may need to include support for a faculty member's research. o mentoring junior faculty to be active participants in processes of change. o articulating to campus administrators the dynamic nature of the discipline and the need for a strong, sustained institutional commitment to quality in the undergraduate chemistry courses that are central to any liberal arts or technical education. o interacting with other departments on campus to learn how chemistry courses fit the needs of their students. o promoting interdisciplinary curricula that improve an understanding of the nature of the scientific enterprise, especially in students who intend to become elementary and secondary school teachers. o recognizing those ideas that work and promoting them nationally through regional meetings of chairs, the Council for Chemical Research, the American Chemical Society and the Division of Chemical Education Task Force on General Chemistry. To Campus Administrators: We urge you to provide a campus environment supportive of faculty efforts to promote excellence in the teaching of undergraduate chemistry courses by: o recognizing that the living nature of the discipline demands continuous renewal and evaluation of course content and pedagogical methods. o providing funding for the implementation, evaluation, and dissemination of curricular innovations. o giving tangible support to faculty efforts to develop and evaluate new courses. o ensuring that faculty efforts in undergraduate education are recognized in tenure and post-tenure evaluations. o increasing recognition of the teaching of undergraduates by teaching awards and distinguished professorships. To the American Chemical Society: We urge you to make the improvement of undergraduate chemistry courses an organizational priority by: o using your resources to assist in the development, evaluation, and dissemination of educational innovation. o ensuring that the guidelines of the Committee on Professional Training are flexible enough that successful curricular innovations can be readily adopted by chemistry departments, and that the committee work closely with the National Science Foundation and the ACS Division of Chemical Education Task Force on General Chemistry to make sure that its guidelines reflect the "state of the art." o seeking support for national awards for excellence and innovation in undergraduate teaching comparable to the awards that now recognize excellence in research. To the National Science Foundation: We recommend that you expand support for educational innovation by: o increasing funding for programs such as Instrumentation and Laboratory Improvement and Undergraduate Course and Curriculum Development, which support the infrastructure for curricular innovation; and Undergraduate Faculty Enhancement, which brings chemical educators into contact with cutting edge research to the benefit of their teaching. o supporting with additional funding the establishment of institutes for a few carefully selected areas where the expertise of an interdisciplinary group could be useful in the integration of new developments in research into introductory courses in chemistry. To Industry and Other Federal Agencies: We urge that you acknowledge the importance of a scientifically literate citizenry and a well-trained technical labor force by investing in chemical education by: o encouraging employees to visit classrooms at all levels to describe the objectives of their companies or agencies, the importance of the chemical industry in meeting the needs of our citizens and in the overall economy of our country, and the place of technical competence in national competitiveness and security. o funding programs that will lead to a better prepared and more diverse technical work force, in particular by supporting speakers who are role models engaged in cutting-edge research and establishing scholarships that enable needy students to concentrate on their studies leading to careers in research and teaching. PANEL B BRINGING RESEARCH CLOSER TO THE CLASSROOM PANEL MEMBERS: Paul Gassman (panel chair), Leland Allen, John Burmeister, Patricia Cunniff, Marcia Lester, Patrick McDougal, Stanley Pine, Karen Singmaster, Robert Wingfield Resolved: New mechanisms can bring research to the classroom; to make this happen we must define faculty scholarship more broadly. Analysis: Chemistry is an experimental science. Concepts taught at the undergraduate level are based on what, at one time, was cutting edge research. Without research and discovery, there would be nothing to teach. Without teaching, there would be no one new to carry out scientific discovery. Teaching and research are co-dependent and unavoidably entwined. We conclude that we now need a better balance of old cutting edge research (much of which is still needed as a scientific base) and today's cutting edge research (to illustrate how little we know and that there is exciting research still to be done) built into course work. This is a necessity not only for courses designed for chemistry and other science majors, but for the vast number of students for whom a broad chemistry course is their last formal exposure to the discipline. Both groups need an appreciation of how scientific knowledge comes into existence, how the problems that have been created by technological development can only be solved by further research that results in real products, and the time required for this transformation. The connection between research knowledge, economics, and national policy should be presented at every level of our curriculum in order that both our future scientists and our future voters will have an understanding of their roles in the development of our nation. The incorporation of this understanding of the nature of research and its importance needs to be carried out at community colleges and liberal arts colleges as well as in research universities. In order to achieve these goals we need new mechanisms and greater enthusiasm for bringing research closer to the classroom, and we need encouragement and recognition that rewards those who are innovative in making this happen. We recommend a multi-pronged attack on the status quo as outlined below. To Chemistry Faculties: We urge that you bring research into your classrooms by: o using your lectures to illustrate with specific examples and selected demonstrations how all knowledge is based on research, and how scientific experimentation and discovery are necessary for the development of concepts. o going beyond texts to include current research in the curriculum to illustrate the living, ongoing nature of the discipline. o inviting industrial speakers, government researchers, and research-active faculty from other institutions to talk about their research and its ethical and practical dimensions. o bringing faculty research expertise into the design of laboratory courses. o illustrating the role of experimentation, observation, and scientific deductions in the laboratory while avoiding whenever possible the classical "repeat the instructions" experiments. o enabling students to experience themselves as professionals by designing laboratory courses to parallel research, including the use of modern instrumentation to generate data in the solution of real problems, and emphasis on both individual and team research. o allowing time in the design of the laboratory for students to fail, to learn from their mistakes and to repeat experiments until meaningful results are obtained. o recognizing the synergism of research and teaching and the need for a balance between the two, including peer respect both for the outstanding teacher who brings research to the classroom and for the outstanding researcher who takes pride in teaching and does innovative curricular development. o recognizing that nontraditional research, such as is needed to develop new courses or new approaches to the laboratory, is extremely important to education, and, therefore, broadening the definition of scholarship to include peer-reviewed publications that describe educational research and innovation. o encouraging undergraduates to be involved in research to the extent possible, starting as early as the first or second year of college, including research related to curricular development. o setting high standards for undergraduate research and encouraging undergraduates to make presentations of their work in writing or orally at institutional undergraduate research symposia, at American Chemical Society Student Affiliate Poster Symposia, or at the annual National Conference on Undergraduate Research. o writing articles based on your own research at a level suitable for use by beginning undergraduates in community colleges as well as in four-year institutions. To Chemistry Department Chairs: We urge that you create an environment that supports the synergism of research and teaching by: o ensuring that faculty who bring research into the curriculum, whether by revising lecture courses, creating new laboratory experiments, mentoring undergraduates in their laboratories, or by writing for undergraduate audiences, get recognition for such efforts. o providing resources such as space and research support for undergraduate research. o establishing awards for excellence in undergraduate research. To Campus Administrators: At Community Colleges, we urge that you support faculty in professional development by: o encouraging them to spend summers and sabbaticals in a research environment. o by inviting research active scientists from industry, academia and government to visit and to present lectures that will aid the faculty in the incorporation of research into their classrooms. At Liberal Arts Colleges, we recommend that you encourage the incorporation of research into undergraduate education by: o recognizing faculty and student research as part of the faculty member's teaching duties. o defining clearly the blend of research and teaching that is expected when faculty are being hired and the role that research plays as part of the liberal arts curriculum. o encouraging research to the extent possible by providing release time and set-up funds for new faculty as well as space and financial support for undergraduate research. o recognizing and rewarding achievements in both traditional and nontraditional research. At Research Universities, we recommend that quality teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels play a greater role in the activities of a faculty member and that this be encouraged by: o increasing the valuation of teaching in hiring, tenure and promotion decisions. o recognizing and rewarding in promotion and salary decisions, as well as with research support, research active faculty who participate in curricular innovation. o encouraging faculty to participate in outreach to four-year colleges, community colleges and high schools through short courses, workshops, and summer research opportunities, so that the excitement associated with experimentation and discovery can be transmitted down the educational chain. To Funding Agencies: We recommend that you modify your funding policies to implement the recommendations outlined above by: o recognizing that the goal of research funding is to be supportive of faculty members in the totality of their careers, research and teaching, and not to remove faculty from the classroom. o initiating professional development programs for faculty at community and liberal arts colleges to spend summers and sabbaticals in research environments, including funding for follow-up research activities at the faculty's home institution. o supporting interaction between faculty at major research institutions and at liberal arts colleges along the models already established in the consortia funded by the Pew Charitable Trust and the Dana Foundation. o supporting undergraduate researchers with funds specifically designated as academic year salaries for them to allow them to devote their time to research instead of to the jobs many must now take to finance their education. o recognizing that faculty scholarship should be defined broadly enough to include innovative contributions to teaching and that special awards should go to young faculty who excel in both teaching and research as was recommended in the recent NSF report on America's Academic Future (A Report of the Presidential Young Investigator Colloquium on U.S. Engineering, Mathematics, and Science Education for the Year 2010 and Beyond, NSF, January, 1992). o recognizing that research active faculty who participate in curricular innovation need additional support if their research is not to suffer, and therefore, providing mechanisms for shared support between the research and educational divisions. o encouraging your grantees to make their research results easily accessible to the larger educational community by writing articles about their research suitable for use by faculty and students at the beginning undergraduate level. To the American Chemical Society: We recommend that you give excellence in chemical education at the undergraduate level high visibility by: o continuing and expanding programs on college chemistry within the Education Division of the American Chemical Society. o establishing very visible national awards for innovation in the teaching of chemistry that parallel the awards given for excellence in research. PANEL C ASSESSING INSTRUCTIONAL INNOVATION; IMPROVING THE PREPARATION OF CHEMISTRY TEACHERS; ASSESSING STUDENT LEARNING PANEL MEMBERS: George Bodner (panel chair), Susan Arena, Clarita Bhat, Adrienne Kozlowski, Robert Kozma, J. J. Lagowski, Lucy Pryde, Brock Spencer, Theodore Williams, Steven Zumdahl Resolved: Improved assessment of instructional innovation will drive curricular change; innovative methods demand better assessment of student learning to facilitate better preparation of chemistry teachers. Analysis: Innovation differs from change in instruction. Innovation results from the effort to solve a local problem. Instructional innovation therefore satisfies the microscopic definition of curriculum development: the process of designing a course that meets specific student needs. Change occurs on a macroscopic scale when many institutions incorporate an instructional innovation into similar courses. Sarason (Sarason, S.B. The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform: Can We Change Course Before It's Too Late? San Francisco: JosseyBass, 1990.) captured the difference between innovation and change in instruction, "A good idea whose time has come is no guarantee of success." For innovation to lead to lasting changes in chemical instruction, we must redefine the needs of our students and the goals of our instruction to include more than just student mastery of a certain content. Once we do this, we need new means of assessing student learning defined broadly, which will then give us a basis for evaluating instructional innovation and for better preparing chemistry teachers. At present, assessment of student learning is based on techniques that are designed primarily to be relatively inexpensive and to require a minimum of faculty and student time. Most commonly we use multiple-choice examinations. We assess on a semester-by-semester basis, with no attempt to measure either long-term retention of, or the ability to apply knowledge. Our examinations focus on the kinds of questions for which there is a single "correct" answer, rather than those for which the correct answer is unknown, or which have more than one correct answer. As a result, we construct an arbitrary boundary between what we do as scientists and what we ask our students to do in science courses. Our tests are not the only problem in our assessment. We grade classes on a curve and essentially eliminate the lower half. Many of our underrepresented minority students disappear in this process. In this what we want? We think not? Lovitts and Champagne (Lovitts, B.E. and Champagne, A.B. In: Assessment in the Service of Instruction. Edited by A.B. Champagne, B.E. Lovitts and B.J. Calinger, Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1990) have described a common source of confusion about assessing student learning. "The term 'assessment' conjures up images of its most common useþassigning grades to studentsþor its most common formatþthe multiple choice examination." In practice, as Lovitts and Champagne2 note, assessment is used also to formulate educational policy, to improve classroom instruction, to convey to students and their parents our expectations of student performance, to monitor the state of science education, and to determine whether resources have been used effectively. All too often the effect of assessment is so powerful that it drives instruction, trapping us in a particular curriculum because we know how to assess that mode of student learning and no other. We must examine the methods that we use for assessing student learning. We must also assess our lectures, our laboratories, our methods, and our tools. In this overall assessment, independent evaluation by cognitive scientists holds the best promise for success. Any evaluation of instructional innovation has to broaden the criteria by which innovation is judged from: "Do students learn the course content better in the experimental setting?" to "What do students really learn? To what extent do the thought processes of the students resemble those of practicing chemists?" Other questions that could form a basis for evaluation include: "What effect does the program have on the retention of students? Does the innovation motivate students to learn? Does the innovation enhance student access to careers in science and engineering? Does it affect the time that students must spend on the course? Does it improve the efficiency with which students use their time? Does it serve the needs of non-science majors as well as majors? How does the innovation affect the course instructor? What is the effect on the department within which the innovation occurs? What does the implementation cost in time, effort, and money? Are the instructional goals welldefined? Have they changed? Does the instruction meet the goals?" Such assessment of instructional innovation is necessary to develop the knowledge that can lead to broad dissemination of innovative changes among chemistry departments. For this to happen, innovators must produce a public artifact that other members of the community can consult in order to implement the innovation. Innovators must ensure that their program can serve other institutions and must develop materials that facilitate use by other instructors. It will be possible to develop criteria for the better preparation of chemistry teachers if the goals of student learning and instructional innovation are defined to include more than mastery of course content. Preparing chemistry teachers often focuses only on pre-service and in-service teacher training programs. This is a mistake; preparing teachers goes beyond the limits of the K-12 classroom to the college and university level. Community colleges have made some progress, and a few four-year colleges include discussion of chemistry teaching in professional development. Research and comprehensive universities have made little progress. In these institutions, promotion and tenure rest squarely on research success. Having a Ph.D. degree in chemistry does not make one an effective teacher. Shulman, L.S. In the Handbook of Research on Teaching, 3rd Edition, Edited by M.C. Wittrock, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1986) has argued that content knowledge is necessary but not sufficient. Teachers at all levels need general pedagogical knowledge about how students learn and content-specific pedagogical knowledge about how to teach within a particular field. Additional research on how college and university students learn chemistry is desperately needed. To encourage the chemical community to move toward the achievement of these goals, we have the following recommendations: To Chemistry Faculties: We recommend that you broaden your assessment of student learning and instructional innovation and contribute to the improvement of chemistry teaching by: o critically examining your goals in instructing students. o thinking about whether the methods you use in testing student knowledge further the goals that you have identified. o engaging in professional development as an educator by participating in discussions with faculty colleagues within the department and from other disciplines, especially those with expertise in pedagogical methodology, about educational goals and methods of assessing whether such goals have been achieved. o inviting faculty from four-year colleges to serve as mentors in teaching for faculty in research institutions. o being supportive of colleagues who are attempting innovation both in course content and in methods of assessment. o collaborating with Schools of Education in programs for the training of pre-service chemistry teachers by designing courses that introduce them to the content of chemistry in a context that builds their understanding of experimental sciences and empowers them to take experiments into elementary and secondary classrooms. o participating in workshops for in-service teachers, again with the specific goal of giving them practical advice on how to engage their students in the processes of scientific discovery. To Departmental and Campus Administrators: We urge that you foster faculty development, and with it fresh thinking about instructional goals, how to achieve them, and how to assess whether attempts to do so have been successful by: o creating an environment in which the status quo is questioned. o recognizing faculty motivation and attitudes as the most important factors in processes of change. o being supportive of motivated faculty during the time that it takes to design, implement, and assess instructional innovation. o encouraging interdisciplinary projects that bring the knowledge of experts in pedagogy to bear on questions of student learning, innovation, and assessment of outcomes. To the National Science Foundation: We recommend that you support thinking about instructional innovation and methods of assessing such innovation by: o creating a mechanism to fund projects to develop new approaches to assessing student learning in chemistry, either through the Division of Research, Evaluation and Dissemination, or for larger impact, as a component of the Division of Undergraduate Education. o expanding the Undergraduate Faculty Enhancement program to fund pedagogical workshops to help college and university faculty understand the need for and how to implement new modes of student assessment as they are developed. o requiring that evaluation of instructional evaluation go beyond measurements of how well students learn in order to provide the information necessary to facilitate the process by which innovation becomes change. To Professional Societies: We recommend that you recognize the power of assessment tools developed at the State and National levels to shape instruction, and resist modes of assessment of student learning that determine what is taught and how it is taught. PANEL D STIMULATING INSTRUCTIONAL INNOVATIONS AND IMPROVING THE SPEED, QUALITY, CONVENIENCE, AND RELIABILITY OF DISSEMINATION PANEL MEMBERS: Glenn Crosby (panel chair), Robert Boeckman, Rodney Boyer, Raymond Chang, Xavier Creary, Edwin Heath, Robert Lynch, James Swartz, and Gary Wnek Resolved: We need new approaches to journals, series, textbooks, and other forms of publication, in order to achieve widespread instructional improvement. Analysis: Rapid development in science and technology and the new world economy are straining the nation's educational enterprise. Educational innovation has not kept pace with the need for improvement. Moreover, not only has instructional innovation lagged, but also what is taught and how it is taught is not effectively informed by recent pedagogical research. Chemical educators agree that we must implement classroom innovations, create new laboratories based on discovery, teach new research results, and infuse modern chemical instrumental techniques into the curriculum. In addition, a consensus is emerging that the chemical curriculum must reflect the impact of chemistry on our culture and the relevance of chemistry to the life of the citizen. We can no longer ignore people, economics, and policy in our chemistry courses. In chemistry, the current methods of dissemination of instructional improvements and innovations are slow, inefficient and inadequate. Whereas chemical research has developed many media that disseminate new results and ideas, chemical education has not. Chemical research uses a large variety of discipline-specific journals, reviews, abstract journals, notes, and brief communications, but chemical education has only the Journal of Chemical Education. Many innovations and improvements that chemical educators report at meetings, conferences, workshops, and symposia are not widely reported and thus are lost. Industry, the research and development community, and government seem unaware of the serious problem that exists in disseminating chemical education innovations and improvements, but all have a major stake in maintaining excellence in chemical education. Chemical education needs both new journals and electronic dissemination. Chemical education is not using new technology effectively. Colleges and universities are not yet completely networked, thus frustrating effective, efficient electronic dissemination. New technology opens access to vast data bases and information systems at relatively low cost, but computational power has not impacted, by and large, the way we teach and the way we communicate with each other. For technology to find its true place in chemical education, we recommend the following: To the American Chemical Society and the Division of Chemical Education of the ACS: We recommend that you foster the dissemination of innovative ideas presented at meetings by: o requiring the submission of preprints in electronic format of all papers, symposia, addresses and posters presented at national meetings and biennial conferences, and instituting mechanisms by which they can be widely disseminated either in print or by electronic means. o maintaining a repository of new educational software. To the Publishing Industry working with the American Chemical Society, the National Science Foundation, the National Science Teachers Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Department of Education: We recommend that you foster change by: o instituting programs that will stimulate collaboration between the education and publication communities on experimental projects that will test innovative mechanisms for providing "source books" for educators. These publications should be compilations of current information in a flexible format that will allow selection, reorganization, modification, and manipulation by the user. A concrete example is a 10,000 page electronic textbook from which an individualized course of study can be assembled by an instructor and reproduced by the publisher for student purchase. o creating a new publication, Chemical Education Letters, that would provide rapid and convenient dissemination of innovative laboratory developments, pedagogical suggestions, methods, ideas for alternative learning environments, and educational technology. Such a publication should be available in both electronic and print formats and possess the following features: (a) A refreeing mechanism controlled by a Board of Editors. (b) A policy that maintains a short, informal method of communication. (c) A formal policy for facilitating exchange of information between reader and author, with the Board of Editors playing a prominent role in stimulating submissions and promoting the exchange of ideas. o creating one or more series publications,Verified Laboratory Experiments, that would parallel successful series such as Organic Syntheses and Inorganic Syntheses. In particular these publication series should have the following features: (a) Editorial Boards that would identify potential contributors, stimulate submissions, and provide means for checking suggested laboratory innovations in actual classroom settings and ascertaining their quality and effectiveness. (b) Emphasis on imparting ideas, procedures, and phenomena from the cutting edge of research into the undergraduate laboratory, highlighting processes of investigation that can be adapted to many different experiments, rather than necessarily completely worked out laboratory exercises. (c) Machine-searchable databases and reliable indexes that could be readily accessed by both students and professionals. o having the Chemical Abstracts Service provide the chemistry community with a "Chemical Abstracts Select" on innovation and new technology in chemical education. o creating a journal outside the Division of Chemical Education devoted to issues pertinent to chemical education at the college and university level. o creating two kinds of review journals. One would review pedagogical information from cognitive science that is relevant to chemical education. The other would summarize and compare different approaches in the teaching of a lecture topic, or a laboratory for example. o establishing National Resource Centers in the central areas of the chemical sciences. These centers could be modeled after the National Science Resources Center jointly established by the National Academy of Science and the Smithsonian Institution or the Polymer Education Center at the University of Wisconsin/Steven's Point that is affiliated with the American Chemical Society. Packages containing pedagogical ideas and materials generated under the National Science Foundation's Undergraduate Curriculum and Course Development Program and laboratory experiments developed through its Instrumentation and Laboratory Improvement program could be made conveniently available for widespread dissemination through these centers. o providing support for the development of appropriate materials such as source books for educators. o providing funding for workshops to guide faculty in their efforts to change instructional paradigms. o providing assistance for the rapid initiation of means of disseminating educational innovations such as the series on new methods in laboratory instruction. o working with other agencies, such as the Department of Education, to fund an electronic network that ties chemistry faculty together. o establishing and maintaining a bulletin board that would allow faculty to pose any questions they wanted to, and enable anybody else on the network to respond. To Chemistry Faculty and Departmental and Institutional Administrators: We recommend that you become actively involved in the processes of the dissemination of educational innovation by: o making it possible for every chemistry instructor at every level of higher education to be on an electronic network with an output computer. To the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the members of the Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology, the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, the National Science Foundation, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Science Teachers Association, and all science and engineering societies that publish official news and information organs: We recommend that you initiate or expand awareness campaigns to raise the consciousness of the academic, governmental and industrial research communities concerning the seriousness of the science education and literacy problems besetting the nation. A particular problem is the lack of transfer of technology and information from the nation's research and development activities to its educational programs. We urge you to address this by: o stimulating academic and non-academic scientists and technologists to think of the transfer of technology and information in broader terms than currently conceived, including the possible incorporation of modern developments into school and university curricula in order to close the gap between the frontiers of knowledge and science as it is perceived and taught at all educational levels. PANEL E BRINGING CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGY IN COMPUTERS AND INSTRUMENTS INTO THE CLASSROOM PANEL MEMBERS: Arlene Russell (panel chair), John Amend, Lawrence Bottomley, Grace Chiu, Thomas Greenbowe, Harry Hajian, Peter Lykos, John Moore, Gilbert Pacey, and Patricia Reggio Resolved: Initiating and spreading the use of new technology in chemical education demands proper infrastructure. Analysis: New technology is driving a paradigm shift in chemical education. Powerful work station computers equipped with high-end-graphics monitors and user-friendly operating systems facilitate visualization and bring molecular modeling and computational chemistry to undergraduate courses and laboratories, enabling student exploration and discovery. Visualization of structures, nucleic acid-small molecule interactions, enzyme-substrate interactions, and data could enhance student interest and appreciation. Animation of reactions could enhance learning. Computers remove the drudgery from data acquisition and plotting, and laboratory courses can now cover new material. Computers bring data from state-of-the-art instruments to undergraduates and simulate instrument operation. Multimedia programs offer many opportunities for presenting situations that require professional judgment and decisions. New educational technology makes possible problem-based courses and labs. We can present motion, still frames, sound, and animation in an environment that enables high-level computation, modeling, and visualization. Using the tactile glove and scanning tunneling microscopy imaging in virtual reality one can now see and move a single atom on a surface. Imagine a blind student learning chemical structure by tactile input from virtual models or students handling dangerous chemical or radioactive waste in a virtual model. Opportunities abound, but we have problems. The new educational technology is expensive, and it requires costly infrastructure. In return, new technology offers gains in educational efficiency and productivity. Broad-band optical-fiber networks such as that proposed by President Clinton enable rapid, reliable interactive information transfer beyond the class room to individuals, schools, and industry. We need similar networks on campus. As of March 1992, while 100% of 104 research universities were on NSF-NET, only 80% of the 109 doctoral universities, fewer than 50% of 595 comprehensive universities, 33% of 572 liberal arts colleges, and 5% of 1367 two-year colleges were on the network. Furthermore, we face a massive educational task in bringing our existing faculty up to speed in using and teaching the new technology. Research instrumentation is developing at a frenetic pace, but educational instrumentation lags far behind. Colleges and universities that cannot afford research-level instruments could use instrument simulatorsþif such simulators were available. But we have not put forth the effort to produce instrument simulators. Why are we satisfied with instruction with out-moded instruments? Chemical education needs the design of new instruments. Five broad areas impinge on the introduction and dissemination of new technology into lower-division chemistry courses: (1) the rewards and recognition that faculty receive for educational innovation, (2) the availability of funds to implement innovation and the attendant infrastructure, (3) the lack of knowledge and information that faculty have regarding educational technology and innovation, (4) the introduction of cutting-edge technology, instrumentation, and research into the lower-division curriculum, (5) the development of problem-based, relevant laboratory courses for majors and for non-science majors. Recommendations (1) Rewards and Recognition Faculty work in producing non-print innovative materials frequently receives little attention. (DeLoughry, T.J. The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 3, 1993). Efforts by faculty in producing computer or multimedia instructional programs are further thwarted by educational bureaucracies that claim ownership and copyrights. To foster educational innovation, we must recognize and value instructional computer and multimedia programs, and we must offer the creators the same rights of ownership that textbook authors enjoy. We must broaden our concept of scholarship to include peer-reviewed publications that describe educational research and innovation in this area as in others. To Campus Administrators: We recommend that you facilitate the development of innovative computer and multimedia programs by: o recognizing creativity in these areas in tenure and promotion decisions. o removing institutional barriers to the ownership of intellectual property rights for the creators of such programs. To the National Science Foundation: We recommend that you support creativity in the development of educational software by: o setting a goal of having all chemistry faculty on an electronic network by 2000 and seeking funds from the Congress to achieve this goal. o funding, with the Department of Education, a network for the dissemination of educational software. o maintaining with the American Chemical Society an electronic bulletin board for abstracts of educational innovations. (2) Funding Implementation New technology enables new instruction. Computer and multimedia technology beg for a new curriculum. Molecular modeling, computational chemistry, simulation, animation, and real-time experiments cry out for a place in the curriculum. Rapid access to remote data bases and interactive student dialog on networks offer new educational opportunities that we must not ignore. Faculty-driven innovation will, however, not suffice. Implementation of technological innovation in the curriculum and the necessary infrastructure to support implementation require major funding. To the Congress, the State Legislatures, and Private Foundations: We recommend emphatically that the new technological infrastructure necessary for educational innovation be supported by: o implementing the Presidentþs initiative for a national broad-band fiber-optic information network. o extending such a network to campuses. o purchasing the new educational equipment required by the paradigm shift that is occurring in chemical education. o providing the facilities, classrooms, and laboratories that the new educational technology demands. To Funding Agencies: We recommend that you further the shift to modern chemical education by: o supporting and encouraging new modes of instruction that use on-line computer materials, non-traditional classrooms, and learning at a distance. (3) Faculty Enhancement Widespread adoption of new technology will not occur without substantial investment in faculty enhancement. Both faculty and administrators must learn to value and understand new instruments and new technology. We must develop effective, accessible mechanisms that inform faculty about innovations, the impact on learning of confirmed innovations, the technology, and the cost and implementation of such. Faculty enhancement must include on-site and off-site programs. New topics in the lowerdivision curriculum such as molecular modeling and computational chemistry will require re-education of many faculty in the science as well as the technology. Faculty enhancement programs can revitalize chemical education. To Chairs of Chemistry Departments: We recommend that you actively encourage the renewal of the skills of your faculty by: o including educational innovation and educational technology in departmental seminar programs. o encouraging and funding faculty attendance at conferences, such as the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education and the Pittsburgh Conference, where new instruments and new educational technologies are shown and discussed. o encouraging and funding faculty visits to institutions that have implemented successful innovations and/or curricular reform. To the American Chemical Society: We recommend that you promote faculty renewal by: o recommending through your Committee on Professional Training and the Chemical Technician Certification Program that over a five-year period all faculty participate in faculty enhancement workshops in chemical education technology. o obtaining through your Division of Chemical Education long term support for the lease or purchase of the equipment necessary to enable demonstration of innovative instructional technology projects at regional and national ACS meetings. To the National Science Foundation: We recommend that you catalyze the spread of new technology by: o urging college and university administrators to participate in faculty enhancement programs dealing with innovation that is based on new educational technology. o creating a program to fund "technology on wheels" projects, managed by ACS, that can be set up in a department for an extended period to allow hands-on use and training for a significant portion of the faculty. o providing travel subsidies for faculty, particularly those in two-year colleges, to acquire training in educational technology. To the Department of Education: We recommend that, through local school districts, you contribute to faculty enhancement by: o sponsoring summer institutes for two-year- college faculty to improve their knowledge of educational technology and modern instrumentation. (4) Cutting-edge Technology, Instrumentation, and Research Cutting-edge technology, instrumentation, and research must occupy a prominent place in the new curriculum; much of our Victorian heritage must retire. Our laboratory courses must assume their proper place in the curriculum as independent courses with their own educational agenda and instructional goals that feature exploration and discovery. Modern instrumentation, molecular modeling, and computational chemistry comprise central features in the emerging curriculum. Instrumental instruction occupies too small a place in the current curriculum. Simulation can help, and we should create low-cost instrument simulators. High-quality chemical education, however, requires student access to instruments that produce research-quality data. Chemical education needs new instrument designs that offer lower-cost modular instruments that use a common computer for data acquisition and processing. The recommendation of Panel B that more forefront chemical research be brought into the curriculum cannot be implemented without major expenditures for new instrumentation and technology for the undergraduate. Financial problems abound. But the chemistry of the dawning century requires more than test tubes and beakers. To the National Science Foundation: We recommend that you spur the development of new instrumentation by: o soliciting proposals through the Small Business Innovation Research Program and the Division of Undergraduate Education for the design of modular instruments built around a single dataacquisition computer. To the American Chemical Society: We recommend that you encourage the incorporation of modern technology into the curriculum by: o requiring through the Committee on Professional Training and the Chemical Technician Certification Program hands-on experience with modern analytical instrumentation, computer-controlled data acquisition, data processing, computational chemistry, and molecular modeling in undergraduate degree programs. (5) Problem-based Courses for Non-Science Majors The consequences of our failure to educate all students about chemistry, economics, and policy afflict us every day: Chemicals cause cancer. Chemicals pollute. We suffer from bad legislation: the Delaney Amendment, the 1990 Clean Air Act, the New Jersey EPA Initiative. We must educate non-science majors. We give too little attention to our general education courses, many of which are so watered down and irrelevant that students shun them. History of science and science-technology- society courses offer a better, more palatable approach, but these courses still keep the non-major student far from our active enterpriseþdiscovery. We need new laboratory-based courses that engage students in exploration and discovery, courses that focus on societal problems and place the students in the role of decision makers and problem solvers, using multimedia technology. Medicine has exploited this strategy brilliantly in training medical students. New visualization technology can bring chemistry to life for non-majors. To the National Science Foundation: We recommend that you support curricular reform that engages all our students actively in the process of discovery by: o encouraging curriculum reform projects that emphasize visualization of data, orbitals, molecules, molecular interactions, and energy surfaces. o supporting the development of hypermedia for the enhancement of interactive educational opportunities for all students. PRESENTATIONS OF THE COCHAIRS Introductory Remarks for the NSF Workshop on Innovation and Change in Chemistry Instruction Orville L. Chapman Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry University of California Los Angeles As we consider innovation and change in chemistry instruction, let us imagine ourselves not as a group of chemical educators but as a group of investors. We own a Victorian hotel built in the late nineteenth century; our hotel occupies a prime site in downtown San Francisco. We love this old hotel; we have spent our lives trying to make it pay. In its heyday, our hotel did well but now the occupancy rate seldom exceeds 20%. We are losing money -- and credibility -- no one stays here unless they are required to do so. Fundamental questions confront us. Shall we remodel? Is the structure sound? Has the time come to plant charges, demolish, and rebuild? Let us consider remodeling our enterprise -- we do some things very well, and we could focus the future on past successes. We train excellent technicians. This is an extremely important aspect of our enterprise. Our students have given the United States a research base that the world admires and emulates. Our students have created a productive industry that is central to the U.S. economy. The chemical industry is our only non-subsidized industry that has a positive balance of payments. This balance of payments amounted to 15.9 billion dollars in 1989 and 15.8 billion dollars in 1990. The chemical industry is twice as important to the U.S. economy as is the automobile industry. The United States cannot afford to lose our chemical industry. Our economy stands poised on the brink of disaster. What happened in the U.S.S.R. can happen in the United States. In "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers," Paul Kennedy, a Yale economist, predicted the demise of the U.S.S.R. on economic grounds four years before it happened. He also predicted that the United States will follow the U.S.S.R. into economic chaos. You say, "It can't happen here". But it can happen here; it is. The United States government borrows one billion dollars each day, and the percentage of our budget required to serve this debt grows each year. We can see the end clearly. We must articulate the importance of chemical industry. I am frightened that so few chemists know how much our economy depends on chemical industry. The U.S. chemical industry is certainly the proudest accomplishment of our enterprise. We must never belittle our accomplishments, but all is not sweetness and light even with our present small clientele. We no longer attract the best talent in our nation, and our product is, on average, not as good as it was twenty years age. Japanese and European chemists now receive better training in chemistry and have a broader, deeper education than the chemists we produce. These statements hold whether one compares B.S.degree recipients or Ph.D.-degree recipients. Inadequate K-12 education causes some of our problems, but we have lowered our own standards -- grade inflation in chemistry exists across our nation. We have eliminated foreign language requirements and reduced humanities requirements. We have greatly reduced the credit hours that we require for a degree. We must better educate our current clientele, and we must demand that our students meet higher standards. Our courses focus on facts, memory, and exercises, but science without exploration and discovery is history. We teach history. We must emphasize process rather than fact and memory. We must discuss ideas that challenge both us and our students. We must confront our students with real problems, problems that matter. Remodeling our hotel will help us serve our current clients better, but far more serious problems demand our attention. Is our structure sound? If it is, why can we not expand our clientele? We ignore the education of all of our students but especially those who choose not to take a chemistry course. Our current students leave our courses as scientifically illiterate as when they entered. I estimate that 80% of U.S. students never take a chemistry course in college; these students ignore us. Our failure to educate all students has created frightening liabilities. We have a nation-wide anti-chemistry bias. We consider chemistry to be the central science. In this regard, we think like the Easter Island natives, who call their small island Rapa Nui -- the navel of the universe. We seem unable to realize or accept that society considers chemistry, not a central science, but a festering sore that may be malignant. To our society, we are a source of problems not solutions. We endure a scientific illiteracy in our society that beggars description. A bill board in Los Angeles shows a young woman in a leotard with the caption, "Chemicals belong in the test tubes, not in bodies." Only in a society of science illiterates can such idiocy appear in public. But worse liabilities loom. We suffer seriously flawed legislation such as the 1990 Clean Air Act. We face the destruction of a major portion of our chemical industry through the emotional New Jersey EPA initiative, which Governor Florio says is intended to eliminate chemical industry from New Jersey. Governor Florio's words protend disaster. Our liabilities exist because we fail to educate all students so that they have a context for chemistry. Our quaint Victorian hotel does not meet current standards. It will withstand neither the earthquake of global change nor the fire of economic competition. The world has changed since the late nineteenth century when our hotel was built. U.S. society has changed rapidly since 1970; the decline in the fortunes of our hotel date from that time. We have a curiously Victorian enterprise amid sleek modern structures that meet current standards and look eagerly to the next century. In an age of space exploration, organ transplants, and genetic engineering, nineteenth-century chemistry cannot compete. We have failed to bring modern chemistry to our present clientele. We have given our students no context for chemistry. We have no hope of expanding our clientele with our present structure. The structure is not sound. The message from 80% of college students comes in loud and clear. Chemistry without people, economics, and policy is irrelevant. We choose to be irrelevant; they ignore us. What shall we do? Dark, empty rooms in our hotel stare at us through blind eyes revealing just how irrelevant we are. Refurbishing our enterprise will make it more attractive to our existing clientele, who are required to use it. Raising standards and broadening our program will improve our enterprise. But new paint and new curtains will not bring in new customers. Cosmetic change will deceive only us.. The structure is unsound; our hotel has stress fractures all over it. The strategic site that we occupy has greater value than our Victorian hotel. We must clear space for a twenty-first century structure. How can we do it? Our new enterprise must interface chemistry, people, economics and policy: we must reach every college and university student in the United States. Every student must understand that he or she is a complex chemical plant producing and using thousands of chemicals and that everything that you can touch in this universe is chemical. We must present chemistry in its social context. In doing so, we take the first step toward science literacy, for ourselves as well as for our students. We must establish reason as the basis for policy decisions. Kingman Brewster's famous question, "If not reason, what?", hangs over our society as a dark pall. Rampant ideology controls much of our national policy, but science has a better answer. We must focus on process, the process of exploration and discovery, and we must eliminate much of the memory work that dominates our current courses. We can no longer turn students loose in the laboratory, but molecular modeling and computational chemistry permit explorations -- and discovery. We must use new tools in exploration, tools that can present problems in new formats. We must address the pressing problems that exist at the chemistry-society interface: waste management, pollution in all its manifestations, risk assessment, health, agriculture, population control. These issues also concern chemical industry -- the most valuable product of our enterprise. We must create and teach an environmentally friendly chemistry . Here I think a cosmetic change will help. I suggest that we call our new enterprise Atomic and Molecular Science. Let us draw every atom and molecule, whether in a living cell or in outer space, under our umbrella. Why do Environmental Science departments exist? Because we who teach chemistry have not done our job. Why do we need a new chemistry? Because we do dumb things without thinking. Consider a simple example: every organic chemistry text teaches chromium compounds as the reagents of choice for oxidizing alcohols to aldehydes or ketones. Industry can no longer use chromium oxidations, and we should neither use them nor teach them. We need to reduce drastically our reliance on solvents -- Yes, we really do need a new chemistry. If we involve our students in the effort to design a zero-waste plant lab now, perhaps one of them will some day design a zero-waste plant. The task borders on the impossible, but our students are more optimistic than we are. We must make every student understand the vital role of chemical industry in the U.S. economy, and we must make every student realize that economic considerations enter all rational decisions. In a nation that borrows a billion dollars each day, teaching economic reality comprises the first responsibility of every educator. We must subject ourselves and our enterprise to thorough evaluation by experts outside our discipline. We have built a great research enterprise because we know what constitutes good research, but our educational enterprise is floundering because we do not know what constitutes good teaching. Evaluation must come from outside chemistry. I have as little faith in the evaluation of chemical education by chemical educators as I do in tort reform by attorneys. Cognitive scientists, statisticians, and humanists have a role in our evaluation, but we also need to revitalize evaluation research. Let us agree to have external experts evaluate every course, every faculty member, every laboratory , every tool that we use. We will reach our true potential only through an agonizing appraisal of our enterprise. To prosper, we must set the standards for our teaching as high as those we have set for our research. In addition, we must discover new means for assessing student progress; I exhort you to explore new approaches. New courses and new learning tools will fail if we continue to use memory tests for student evaluation. If our introductory courses rise to sufficiently high levels, we may find that we can dispense with grades. If we make chemistry important, students will flock to our course. Students seek new ideas. But we are used to students who are required to stay in our hotel. Venturing into a free-market economy, where students can choose, poses problems for us. In the introductory course, if we must choose between grades and access to the students, let us choose access to the students. Writing in the Los Angeles Times about our economic future, James Flanagan said "A new world is being born in this decade, even as the old one is written off. To profit from that you have to be nimble and change your thinking". I commend two statements to you as guides to this uncertain new world. Chemistry without exploration and discovery is history. Chemistry without people , economics, and policy is irrelevant. Our quaint old hotel with its dark, empty rooms cannot compete. Refurbishing it will serve our existing clientele better, but remodeling will not fill the empty rooms. The structure is unsound. We must demolish our old hotel so that we can build a new structure that will compete in a market economy. But we ourselves are the quaint, Victorian enterprise. We are the problem. We must reorient and re-educate ourselves; we must undergo a mental and spiritual metamorphosis. If we cannot, we must go. Let's use dynamite : now. Introductory Remarks for the NSF Workshop on Innovation and Change in Chemistry Instruction Seyhan N. Ege Department of Chemistry University of Michigan Professor Chapman has issued an unexpected challenge to us: a severe one. Much of what has so far passed as innovation and change in the community of chemical educators has consisted of relatively minor changes in the content of courses, and the development of a few new laboratory experiments, mainly incorporating more instrumentation. In my more despairing moments I liken what is going on to the rearrangement of deck chairs as the Titanic sinks, a metaphor not unlike Professor Chapman's Victorian hotel with cracks in its foundation. I have been to many discussions of curricular change, especially for first year courses. Most discussions seem to get bogged down on whether topic X or Y or Z (choose one) belongs in the first year. Invariably there are calls too for the inclusion of new and exciting topics A or B or C (again you may take your pick). In conferences I have attended, I have not heard discussed how any one of the topics chosen increases a student's understanding of what it means to be a scientist though we all profess to be interested in that. I have not seen much discussion that convinces me that proponents of various contents are thinking beyond the necessity of conveying certain facts of chemistry, facts that we often mistakenly believe are needed by the captive clientele that Professor Chapman identifies for us, including our own majors. But what do we, as scientists, do with facts? How much of an understanding of our mode of operation do our students get? If I sound harsh, I speak from several years of experience in shepherding curricular change through my own department, and with an understanding of how extraordinarily difficult it is to have any innovation at all, let alone to have it approach what NSF calls "change." Why is this so? As the report of the NSF Workshop on Undergraduate Education in Chemistry, convened almost exactly four years ago, put it: "Chemistry instruction at the introductory level has resisted numerous exciting advances and a substantial broadening of the discipline. The result has been a virtual fixation with topics and foundation concepts that served chemistry well during its early development as the central molecular science, but which, today, do not allow us to present chemistry as the dynamic, exciting enterprise that we know it to be. If the present course is followed to the limit, chemistry like Latin, soon could be regarded as a 'dead' language." Exactly. Our Victorian hotel needs much more than a rearrangement of its furniture. We do not excite students with our introductory courses because we have inadvertently isolated those courses from the subdisciplines where research creates renewal and excitement. To quote Professor Leland Allen, "General Chemistry is not a discipline. Nobody gets a Ph.D. in general chemistry. Nobody does research in general chemistry." And many of the topics that occupy "basic chemistry" courses turn out not to be basic at all, but in fact, some of the most abstract and difficult concepts there are. They are "principles" only for those who have enough experience in chemistry to see how disparate facts are unified by those principles. No wonder beginning students have trouble seeing a unifying theme in many of our courses. No wonder we find it difficult to import the cutting edge of research into these courses. No wonder students cannot carry what they learn in these courses forward to an experience of how scientists use the known to model and predict the unknown, which is what engages and excites us in our -intellectual life. Mostly we are unable to share that intellectual excitement with our beginning students. Besides being a repository of useful facts, chemistry has much to offer as a liberal art, in teaching students to see relationships among seemingly disparate elements, to reason by analogy, to sort relevant from irrelevant data, to use symbols and language precisely. Mostly we abdicate our responsibility to teach the subject as a liberal art by the types of examinations we give for the sake of simplicity in grading. In spite of the increasing evidence in the literature of chemical education of the large difference between what we think we are teaching and what students actually learn, we are not, by and large, changing how we evaluate our students' learning. Any probing examination that expects anything beyond a memory of facts and an application of a few well-practiced algorithms, reveals tremendous student difficulties. Students have trouble reading a narrative, sorting out data that are given to them, understanding what a question requires, answering it in words, symbols, graphs, or structural formulas that they themselves must generate. Yet this is what they must do as professionals, whatever field they enter. To ask less of them deprives our students of real accomplishment that intrigues them and builds tremendous self-confidence. So while we are here to discuss how innovation can be encouraged, and how that which has taken place can be converted into real change, institutionalized, and disseminated in the community, I would raise the question, along with Professor Chapman, of whether the nature of our innovation is far-reaching enough. Some ways we can measure that, I will pose as questions for us to consider as we hold our group discussions. What is it that we, the faculty do when we conduct our research or educate ourselves in a new discipline? What are the mental processes by which we construct our new knowledge? Is there an artificial dichotomy between how we learn and how we teach (that is, how we expect students to learn)? What are the goals of our courses? Is it mastery of a specific content'? Is it maturation as a scientific thinker? Is it the ability to solve problems (as opposed to finding the answers to exercises)? Do we care whether our courses increase or decrease a student's self-confidence? Is it relevant? How do we measure any or all of the above? Are our national tests performing a service or disservice? Is it only the students who need to be evaluated? Is it possible to organize our beginning courses so that their content remains close to the cutting edge of research? Is it possible to forgo our traditional "introductory" courses and plunge with students right into an examination of topics of significance, whether of environmental, medical, nutritional, or economic importance? Could not any one of these provide a context for a more significant introduction to a modern "Atomic and Molecular Science" than we now achieve? Can modern technology support such an innovation by giving students tools with which they acquire factual knowledge and a chance to practice basic skills as they need it? How does a faculty renew itself to meet the challenge of the need for a new kind of chemical education? Is it enough to change the content of our courses? These are questions that I bring to you from the process of curricular change that is underway at the University of Michigan. The issues I raise are very much alive in our department. In their own way they are dynamite. PLENARY LECTURE Science Education, Who Needs It? Norman Hackerman Rice University and University of Texas The purpose of the support of faculty research should be to maintain originality, creativity, and enthusiasm in the faculty member with the view of inducing the same in the students. The outcome of the research, that is new science, should be seen as a bonus. The title has been used before (Hackerman, Norman, Science, 1992, 256, 157) but is worthy of being repeated in order to provide again the simple answer - everyone. A more fully responsive answer might be everyone, because science, and more particularly technology, are part of human culture (the state of advancement of civilization) and therefore important to all of us. It is probably true, however, that none of us is interested in all parts of our cultures, and science is certainly no exception to this shortcoming. Nonetheless almost all of us should be as aware as possible of science, which is simply our understanding of nature and its ways, for two additional reasons. The first is so as to be at ease with nature, a much more complex problem than this simple statement suggests. The second is to be at ease with the sometime bewildering pace of technological advance. Both of these reasons imply the desirability of understanding research, development, science, technology, and their interactions as well as their relationship to ultimate use. Another important aspect that deserves broad recognition and better integration into the societal mind is the effect of these factors on education. It is worth noting that the latter is an activity that occupies the full attention of perhaps a third of the country's population. The scientific and engineering community has acquired great stature over the last half century. This is especially the case of the former, since engineers have enjoyed good standing since ancient times. Along with the increased stature have come certain stances, again especially of the scientific community. The first such involves our belief that only the practitioners of research in the sciences understand the domain. We have the tendency to believe that the zeal we have for our work and the methods we use are not understandable to others. Therefore, we sometimes adopt an attitude that says suitable support should be forthcoming because of the vital importance of our work. Related to this is the unsupported belief that science is a direct force on the economy. This is a belief held not only outside the community but inside it as well. A third position is less substantial, namely that there are two cultures, (Snow, C.P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. New York American Library, N.Y., 1964) and ours is the important one. This is in part for the reasons given above and in part because, to many, science seems dominant. A fourth belief is that new science provides a direct lead-in to human longevity and better health. Except perhaps as related to health, none of these positions are truly acceptable. The two culture argument is untenable if the dictionary description of culture (as the state of advancement of civilization) holds. There can be only one culture and we are all in this together. It may be that there are two, or more, practices within the single culture and that may well be part of the problem. The remaining two positions are somewhat intertwined. Scientists' understanding of nature summed over all of us in the field is indeed impressive. With only few exceptions, however, our vision and our vocabulary permit each of us only a narrow deep insight into nature. Our broader ignorance is tempered only by a basic understanding of the scientific process. In other words we are almost as much in the dark about science as are those we castigate for lack of scientific 'literacy.' Any suggestion that support of our research is vital to society's welfare loses some of its force. Research may be our domain, but the support to which we have become accustomed is in a much broader domain. To expect that it not be in competition with some other more timely concerns is unwise. This brings us to the argument involving the importance of science to the economy. Many in industry and elsewhere believe that most industrial programs advance by evolutionary steps and depend primarily on factors such as financing, engineering, marketing, and the like. The science which is already available or obtainable 'on order' is sufficient for this purpose. This does not mean that science is not important. But of all the interdependent steps required, starting from an improved understanding of nature and ending with better products or services, the incorporation of new science is not the limiting one. Obviously whole new industries form from time to time on the basis of revolutionary ideas - provided it is understood that while scientific discovery may be a key step, it is not the only such in the sequence from raw science through technology to ultimate societal use. The relation between research and human health appears to be more solid. Here there seems to be a more direct link between new research findings and the potential for improved human well being. Even here, however, the coupling between discovery and use is loose. As was already noted, the stature of research scientists and engineers has grown markedly in the public eye since the close of the war of the 1940's. Indeed members of our community have input to decisions at high levels of the government. Add to such heady standing, the current use of prowess in research as the measure of academic achievement and it is not surprising that there is degradation of post 12th grade education, especially at the 13th and 14th level. This neglect of teaching at the underclass level clearly has had detrimental effects on elementary and secondary school performance as well. The latter stems from ever increasing neglect by the science community of those students who might be fitted for and interested in precollege and community college teaching careers. This cohort has been lumped in with all others whose interests do not require major immersion in the sciences. It is worth calling attention to an important statistic, namely, that the whole scientific and engineering cohort numbers five million in this country. That is, we comprise 2% of the U.S. population, not vanishingly small but not overwhelming either. To carry this point further the largest estimate available for the number of research scientists and engineers in the U.S. is one quarter of a million, or 0.1% of the population. Using the figure of 2% and arbitrarily multiplying it by 5 to include those who require a science background in their profession, e.g., workers in the health field or patent attorneys, we find that 90% of those in college do not require an in-depth science background for their livelihood. These people plus the some 60% of the population who do not go to college provide most of the wherewithal to support the Federal Government's research and development activities. Deep concern has been voiced about the availability of interested and qualified individuals to succeed those of us currently in place in the research community: the pipeline problem. For a time this concern centered on the question of successors to faculty positions particularly in research universities. This induced an almost hysterical response, which had the effect of still further diminishing faculty interest in non-science majors. This lack of interest in non-science majors could well be detrimental in terms of a potential weakening of our support base, which may already be underway. It is also consequential because this part of the cohort is perhaps the best source of K- 1 2 teachers, who could be given a real appreciation of science, research, development, technology, and teaching. Clearly the last statement is an opinion. Two other items deserve mention here. There is among some a perception of inequity in that 0.1% of the population received about 2.8% of the GNP in 1990 as support for their work. Note, this does not include salaries and fringe benefits. Even if only a quarter of R&D spending goes to research, 0.7% of the GNP still goes for support of only 0.1% of the population, again excluding remuneration. The second item relates to valuing faculty activities. In research universities this has swung from being based on too high a teaching to research ratio to too high a research to teaching ratio. Research is important in maintaining a steady stream of educated individuals, from scientists to accountants, to people our entire scientific and technological enterprise. Research is effective in maintaining creative faculty, which in turn fires up originality in students. The purpose of the support of faculty research should be to maintain originality, creativity, and enthusiasm in the faculty member with the view of inducing the same in the students. The outcome of the research, that is new science, should be seen as a bonus. Given that all of the above is valid, what is to be done? Insofar as grades K-12 are concerned, the important task for university faculty is to help form good elementary and secondary school teachers. As has already been noted, the science background of these teachers must be a matter of concern for the science faculty. Since current 13th and 14th level courses have not been successful in educating such teachers, it follows that a different approach is necessary. Presently such variations as are attempted remain based on a disciplinary approach. These fail for a number of reasons, such as the use of insider language instead of customer language, greater depth and breadth of discipline than the nonprofessional wishes to acquire, greater mathematics proficiency than many opt for, a perception that non-science majors are lazy or stupid or both, when for most part it is a flagging of interest in a topic about which many were originally curious. There are probably other reasons also. The 13th level course should be for all students and be based on a better understanding of nature. High standards of intellectual quality must be maintained, and laboratory and observational activities must be an integral part. Such a course can be seen as approaching the additional problem of a better understanding of science by the public at large since three to four million students a year would have the exposure. Many general science courses have been tried with little or no success. In general they have been watereddown disciplinary courses or superficial interdisciplinary courses with each discipline having a recognizable but not very enlightening segment. Beyond the freshman year for those who major in science or require it for their future professional life the proper thing, of course, is to begin to delve into the appropriate discipline, still maintaining high standards of quality. At this point we should minimize unproductive barriers to those who are interested, but we should not induce the uncertain into the field. The last point is important since research and problem-solving are frustrating enough at times even for those fully self-motivated toward research as a career. The basis for the opening course, whether for non- majors alone or for all, should be nature and its components: forces, material, space, and time. The course must include the particulate nature of matter, its interchangeability with energy, the quantum quality of the latter, its relation to force, the origins of force, and so on. Being repetitious, it should use the language of those listening and not the code words of the insider. It should intertwine laboratory and other observations and it should use computers generously. It should keep uncertainty, anomaly, conundrum, and change always in the forefront. Such an approach provides a context for the introduction of ideas such as risk, risk assessment, how such knowledge affects us, and the place of science and technology in societal affairs. Such a course provides a rational basis for an introduction to the existence of the disciplines as well as the subdisciplines. In addition, the relative scientific narrowness of most practitioners can be clarified. Finally, the vital need for ever-expanding technology and the dependence of technology on science can be shown. In fact the system of progression from science to technology to use and the many types of participants, other than scientists and engineers, required by the system should be discussed. This course cannot be used as a precursor to courses in the individual disciplines but there are two avenues available to the non-science major whose interest is piqued enough to want to go further. One is to take the standard course in one or more fields according to taste and time. The other is to have courses available on generic societal problems of high technology content. Examples include those dealing with the environment, transportation, energy, health, construction, and the like. In sum we can do better in interesting students in science without making scientists of them. This requires leaving behind the belief that only those with deep interest in the field are intellectually capable of grasping its rudiments and of recognizing the importance of science to the entire human species. WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS (See list attached. Information not on computer Disk)