One visitor suggested that a chemistry major whose undergraduate laboratory program did not include biochemical techniques is at a serious disadvantage when it comes to beginning a graduate research program that involves cutting-edge work. Another enthusiastically described new areas of research that mix inorganic principles with neurochemistry. In my department nearly 60% of the faculty (four analytical, five inorganic, ten organic, and seven physical chemists) is doing some research involving a biology-related area. This is in a university where biochemistry is a separate department in a different college from the chemistry department. Presumably the fraction would be higher in a combined department of chemistry and biochemistry. The fraction is definitely higher among younger faculty, essentially all of whom are working on biochemical problems for at least part of their research effort. In the realm of research, the trend is clear.

In the realm of teaching, it is much less clear that we are taking advantage of the new directions and exciting research that chemists are pursuing. There are some promising signs. In the early 1990s a group of materials and solid-state chemists produced Teaching General Chemistry: A Materials Science Companion (1), which indicated how a broad range of solid-state and materials-chemistry ideas and examples could be incorporated into the first-year college course. The ACS Committee on Professional Training has decided that, in addition to traditional subdisciplines, “Biochemistry must also be part of the undergraduate curriculum for chemistry degree students.” (2) In December 2002, then ACS President Eli Pearce asked, “How can we expect to attract young people to our field when the really exciting, relevant chemistry languishes at the back of the textbook?” (3)

Unfortunately, these appear to be exceptions to a general reluctance to bring interdisciplinary topics and examples into the mainstream curriculum for chemistry majors and science majors. One reason for this is that new material must compete with existing course content, and we are loath to prune away tried and true topics. It would be a mistake to delete chemical principles that are needed to understand the latest research, but, as advocates of both solid-state and biochemical topics have demonstrated, the chemical principles that constitute the core of our courses can be applied easily and seamlessly to these new areas. Because many students are interested in careers in biomedical sciences and materials sciences, including such applications also broadens the appeal of our courses and may motivate many students to study and learn chemistry.

Another argument is that the latest research is just too advanced and complicated for beginning students. I have been told, for example, that seeing structures of large biomolecules in the early pages of a general chemistry textbook is “scary”. Yet one finds similar molecular structures in the pages of The New York Times, Scientific American, and many other publications that are read by those with a general, but not necessarily scientific, education. Moreover, students are likely to have seen complicated biomolecular structures in their high school biology courses, and these certainly are no scarier than molecular orbital theory. Who then is going to be scared? Perhaps it is professors. If so, shame on us! We cannot be contributing members of a profession dedicated to knowledge and learning if we are unwilling to spend the time to learn new ideas or keep up with new directions in our discipline.

Chemistry content changes continually. Everyone involved in chemical education should evaluate on a regular schedule the content and emphasis of our courses. Not to do so almost guarantees that we will not be serving the best interests of our students—and ourselves. If we shy away from new material because we are unfamiliar with it, we are poor modelers of the process by which we hope our students will become self-sufficient learners. Moreover, we are unlikely to attract to our discipline those students who already have some knowledge of where in modern science the action really is. Both of these would be costly mistakes. Let’s resolve not to make them.

Literature Cited

1. Ellis, Arthur B.; Geselbracht, Margret J.; Johnson, Brian J.; Lisensky, George C.; Robinson, William R. Teaching General Chemistry: A Materials Science Companion; ACS: Washington, 1993.
2. ACS Committee on Professional Training; Undergraduate Professional Education in Chemistry: Guidelines and Evaluation Procedures; ACS: Washington, 1999.
3. Pearce, Eli “Reinventing Chemical Education”, Chem. Eng. News 2002, 80 (49), 33 (accessed Mar 2003)