Education and Environment Hot Topics At ACS Meeting

American Chemical Society officials expect 12,000 attendees at next month's biannual meeting in Washington, D.C., billed as the organization's "1994 fall meeting." Scheduled to run from August 21 to 25, the event will be the society's 208th national gathering. ACS 208th NATIONAL MEETING At the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society, from August 21 to 25 in Washington, D.C., the division of chemical education will be sponsoring a series of symposia scheduled to run through all five days of the conference. The sessions will feature 270 papers on a variety of topics relating to chemical education, including the teaching of undergraduate chemistry, "distance" learning for individuals at the workplace, and the role of computers in furthering chemistry. Listed below are the titles of some of the symposia sponsored by this division: Cooperative Learning in Chemistry Examining the Organic Chemistry Lecture Course General Chemistry: Going Around in a Revolving Door is Not Revolution Integrating Computers into the Undergraduate Curriculum Use of the Internet by Chemists What Chemists Need to Know About Computers and Computing Biochemistry Education High School Chemistry Educators Program Video, Terrestrial, and Satellite Delivery of Higher Education Environmentally Benign Syntheses and Processes in the Chemistry Curriculum At the assembly, 30 of ACS's 33 divisions, two committees, and one secretariat will participate in over 520 technical sessions featuring more than 5,000 papers. The meeting offers a wide selection of topics; attendees can, for example, learn about everything from fire-proof aircraft and designer foods, to ozone and the uses of the Internet in chemistry. As in the 1994 spring meeting (N. Sankaran, The Scientist, Feb. 7, 1994, page 3), environmental issues will receive a lot of attention; this time around, they are the subject of the presidential plenary session, entitled "Environmental Technologies for the Future." "Two important themes we will address [at the fall meeting] are recycling and benign, or `green,' manufacturing," says ACS president Ned Heindel, a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. Both Heindel and Janet Osteryoung, an electroanalytical chemist at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, who chairs the division of analytical chemistry, point to the search for more environmentally friendly manufacturing processes as a new direction the chemical industry is taking. "It is an example of strategic research--where basic chemistry [the study of chemical reactions] is being applied to solve a strategically important problem," says Osteryoung. In addition to the plenary session, environmental technologies will be highlighted at a symposium called "Design for the Environment," organized by the division of environmental chemistry, and at a technical program on recycling polymers, run by the macromolecular secretariat. A group that Heindel says has been "particularly active" this year is the division of chemical education, which is putting together a program featuring 17 symposia at which about 270 papers will be presented . "A very important issue we will be looking at is the question of what should be included in general, introductory chemistry courses," says Allan Smith, program chairman for the division and a professor of chemistry at Drexel University in Philadelphia. "Historically, some areas--organic chemistry, for example-- have been neglected." A symposium titled "Examining the Organic Lecture Course" will delve deeper into this neglect and talk about methods to teach the subject more effectively, he says. "Cooperative learning is also getting a lot of attention," says Smith, who feels that the educational system needs to move away from the standard lecture mode toward getting students to participate more actively. "For example, in my class, rather than tell the students what a hydrogen bond is, I hand out graphs and data to groups of students who then examine them, look for trends, and grasp the concept for themselves." Modern advances in computer sciences and communications have had their impact in chemistry education, as well, say both Smith and Heindel, and the symposia reflect these new technologies. " 'Distance learning' is the buzzword now," says Heindel. "Companies have more employees with bachelor's-level education, and using televisions and videos to teach them offers these workers a chance to upgrade their skills while at the work site." Major customers for this type of training are "big companies," he says, such as the multinational chemical firm E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co. Inc., headquartered in Wilmington, Del. Chemical companies like Du Pont are also the source of the majority of the members of a new group within ACS--the division of chemical technicians, which moves from probationary to regular divisional status this year. "As the industry gets more and more complex, technicians need to be more aware of what is happening in their field," says Dennis Marshall, chairman of the new division and a technician dealing with environmental issues in the organic chemicals division of Eastman Chemical Co., Kingsport, Tenn. "At this meeting, for instance, I would attend the sessions on chemistry and the law as well as the workshop on environmental regulations." "Technicians, who have either a bachelor's- or master's- level education, face the same challenges as Ph.D. scientists to know what the breakthroughs are in their area," says Heindel. "Having this division will give them a vehicle to meet and present papers." "There are lot of informational and educational benefits to be gotten from meetings like this," agrees Marshall. "Most technicians would not otherwise get an opportunity to meet with other chemistry professionals." Full details on the dates and times of all technical sessions, as well as a listing of exposition exhibits and workshops of the ACS fall meeting are to be published in the July 18 issue of Chemical and Engineering News.

Education and Environment Hot Topics At ACS Meeting

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