Crim and Polik report that the ACS Committee on Professional Training (CPT) is carrying out a major review of the CPT Guidelines and Evaluation Procedures for Undergraduate Professional Education in Chemistry (accessed October 2004). Some time ago I called attention to an update of these guidelines that changed the requirements for a chemistry major concentrating in chemistry education and introduced a chemistry education minor (1). Now CPT would like the entire community of chemists to provide feedback on the complete set of guidelines. Crim and Polik list ten questions on which they are soliciting input and request that you email comments to CPT with “ACS Guidelines Revision” in the subject line. All comments received before the end of December will be summarized and organized for consideration by CPT members at the spring ACS national meeting. Discussion of the guidelines will continue through summer 2005, and your input will be valuable at any time during the winter and spring. Please think about what an ACS-certified undergraduate should know and be able to do, think about the impact of the CPT guidelines on your department’s program, jot down suggestions for improving the guidelines, and make your views known to CPT.

An article by Casey and Bell reports on the ACS Academic Employment Initiative (AEI), which was inaugurated as a 2004 ACS Presidential Event at the national meeting this past spring and fall. In the spring a three-hour session involved interaction between the audience and a panel made up of experienced faculty and recently-hired faculty. There will be another such panel next spring at the San Diego national meeting. At the fall 2004 national meeting, candidates for academic positions and those recruiting for such positions came together in the relatively informal setting of a poster session. The aim was to maximize interactions among candidates and recruiters and to broaden the faculty hiring process. By all accounts the initiative was a success. There will be another AEI poster session next fall in Washington, DC, and those who want to hire new faculty should make a note to attend. The same applies to those seeking faculty positions. This is a two-year experiment that was initiated by ACS President Chuck Casey. Input is sought regarding the success of the first year’s events and whether the AEI ought to become a fixture at ACS national (or regional) meetings. Send your comments via email.

Graduate education in chemistry has been discussed on these pages before (2), and it was the subject of a presidential symposium at the recent ACS meeting in Philadelphia. ACS President Chuck Casey explains that he sponsored the symposium to focus attention on several questions. Do current Ph.D. programs address student needs adequately? How can we help graduate students become proficient at learning new fields and at working with experts from other disciplines? What are graduate faculties doing to evaluate Ph.D. programs and experiment with innovative ways to improve them? Notable about the presidential symposium is that graduate students were important participants in organizing the program and presenting their ideas for improving graduate education. The broad range of interests and expertise represented at this symposium and reported beginning on p 1698 bode well for improvements in graduate education throughout the U.S.

This Journal stands ready to disseminate information and ideas regarding both graduate and undergraduate education. In particular, I encourage those who are experimenting with graduate education to make use of these pages to spread their ideas more widely. The parent ACS, the Division of Chemical Education, and this Journal are working to improve chemical education at all levels, K–12, undergraduate, and graduate. Please join us in these endeavors by writing up your innovative programs or critiques of existing programs and sending them to us for publication. We look forward to hearing from you.

Literature Cited

1. Moore, J. W. J. Chem. Educ. 2003, 80, 719.
2. Moore, J. W. J. Chem. Educ. 2002 79, 7; Moore, J. W. J. Chem. Educ. 2002, 79, 1159.