Courses Keep Industry, Government Scientists Competitive

This past March, more than two dozen scientists gathered in a small conference room at Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories (MSDRL) in West Point, Pa. They were there for a half-day seminar on the signal transduction of receptors, the first in a five-part, company-sponsored lecture series on receptors. The instructor, Ben Margolis, an assistant professor in the department of pharmacology at New York University Medical Center, told his audience he wanted the talk to be informal--and it was. "He encouraged us to interrupt if we had any questions--and we all took full advantage," says Jacqueline Gress, a chemist with MSDRL who attended the lecture. "Unlike a typical college seminar, there was a lot of give-and-take. This made some very complicated scientific concepts much more accessible, and it really shortened my learning curve. The journals are flooded with so many new studies about receptors that it's virtually impossible to keep up--especially when you're working 50 or 60 hours a week. That's why this was so invaluable." Each year, Merck sponsors dozens of on-site scientific training programs for its staffers. The pharmaceutical firm does not keep statistics on how much of this money is earmarked specifically for funding its scientifically oriented seminars on such subjects as laboratory techniques, technical writing, cell biology, immunology, pharmacology, chemical reaction mechanisms, monoclonal antibodies, and molecular biology. But the company's commitment to science education has grown enormously since 1986. In 1990, Merck spent more than $62 million, or about $1,675 per employee, on training worldwide. That is almost a threefold increase over Merck's budget for training in 1986, when the company spent $20 million, or about $650 per employee, according to company officials. In the past, explains Jeff Garelik, manager of MSDRL training and development, "we'd invite speakers from academia to give seminars on topics that were relevant to a specific research group. Or we'd send staffers to university conferences and symposiums. But five years ago, we realized it would be more efficient and more cost-effective to do this in-house." Indeed, science and engineering classes are being given in conference rooms at numerous other firms throughout the United States, including such corporate giants as IBM Corp. of Armonk, N.Y.; AT&T Bell Laboratories of Murray Hill, N.J.; and E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. Inc. of Wilmington, Del. "There's definitely much more cross-fertilization going on now between academia and industry," says Margolis, who's done several lectures for MSDRL both at the West Point facility and at Merck's corporate headquarters in Rahway, N.J. No one has yet determined exactly how many companies offer science-oriented training to the ap- proximately 4.8 million technical professionals in the U.S. But managers at growing numbers of corporations feel compelled to offer these courses in order to stay competitive, and an ever larger percentage of the more than $40 billion that is spent annually on corporate education is funding science classes. One yardstick of how interest in these programs has mushroomed, says Fred E. Voss, director of skills training programs for the American Society for Training and Development in Alexandria, Va., "is the number of people who subscribe to our technical training newsletter. We started from ground zero four years ago with 3,000 subscribers who train technical personnel. Today, that number has skyrocketed to more than 60,000." Some firms, like Merck and du Pont, offer in-house educational programs. Others, like Exxon Corp., headquartered in New York; Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., also based in New York; and the Stamford, Conn.-based Xerox Corp., have established educational and training facilities in self-contained locations away from the corporate headquarters. Still others provide training via satellite transmissions from institutions like California State University, Chico; the University of Maryland; and the National Technological University in Fort Collins, Colo., that regularly beam science, engineering, and computer courses to specially outfitted corporate classrooms around the country. All of this has been triggered by a profound demographic change that is revolutionizing the workplace. Within the next decade, 41 percent of all jobs will be in skilled occupations, as compared with 24 percent in 1984, according to studies done by the U.S. Department of Labor. Yet a study done by the Hudson Institute, an Indianapolis-based think tank, reports that most people who will be employed in the year 2000 are already in the workplace. Consequently, most of the burden of retraining the work force of today for the jobs of tomorrow will, of necessity, be shouldered by employers. Compounding this problem for employers of scientists and engineers is the fact that rapid advances in technology render these professionals' expertise obsolete astoundingly fast. Nell P. Eurich, a member of the board of the Carnegie Foundation, writes in The Learning Industry: Education for Adult Workers (Princeton, N.J., The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Learning, 1990) that "a career that didn't exist when a person entered college may be in demand by the time he or she graduates, just as another career fades away." Despite today's uncertain economic times, employee training programs appear to be recession-proof. "It's really an interesting phenomenon," says Marlys C. Hanson, a management consultant based in Livermore, Calif., who's done training seminars for engineers and scientists for almost two decades. "In the past, education funds were always the first to be cut. But we now see the reverse--more resources are put into scientific training because it is the lifeblood of the organization, and it has so much impact on the long-term health of a company." At Merck, what began as a modest, ad hoc arrangement has expanded into a vast training enterprise, with scientists from such prestigious institutions as Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dartmouth College, and Yale University sharing their expertise with the nearly 1,000 MSDRL researchers who participate in the company's science education programs each year. There was some trial and error before the Merck staffers administering this program hit upon a formula that worked. "Probably the biggest mistake we made initially was trying to do too much," Garelik says. "For example, we offered a three-day biochemistry course. Participants were just overwhelmed with material. So we decided to just pick a slice of each area--say, pick four or five topics in biochemistry and teach each of them for half a day." In the beginning, Garelik, a molecular biologist by training, set up the programs himself. But as time went on, it became apparent to him that he needed input from researchers in the trenches. "I had the top managers nominate key employees, and I sat down with them to brainstorm [about] what was needed," he says. "Then I'd follow up on their suggestions and go through a series of fine-tuning, until we had completely hammered out a course that would be relevant across departments, and we secured the best speaker to present the material." Nowadays, the approximately 2,400 employees in Merck's research division are polled periodically to determine their areas of interest. A few times a year, the Science Education Advisory Committee, composed of about 20 senior-level scientists, combs through these data to determine what courses would complement the firm's current activities. "Our objective is to help our staff stay at the leading edge," says Garelik. "Technology is advancing at such a rapid rate, it's hard for busy professionals to keep up. But they need--and want--to learn state-of-the-art technical information they can apply immediately to their work. And a tremendous side benefit is the contact with excellent outside researchers in classroom settings and in informal gatherings afterwards." National labs, as well as corporations, offer training programs to their employees. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL), located about 30 miles north of Berkeley, Calif., has a long-standing association with universities in the San Francisco Bay area--Stanford University and the University of California's Berkeley and Davis campuses--that dates back to the lab's founding in 1952. In fact, UC-Davis' department of applied science is headquartered at LLNL, and there's a thriving academic program for advanced degrees as well as continuing education programs. In any given month, the 3,000 scientists and engineers employed at the lab may attend 50 to 100 different classes offered in-house by LLNL. "We are a leading-edge R&D lab, and to stay at the leading edge, we need to create programs to teach new knowledge and introduce new skills and technologies," says Ted Michels, chairman of LLNL's continuing education committee. "One of our selling points is that the laboratories are a campus-like environment, and the fact that education plays such an important role here is an excellent recruitment tool. Generally, scientists are committed to their careers, and being able to keep up with the latest advances in their fields is crucial to them." Indeed, LLNL's continuing education program has grown dramatically since its inception in the early 1970s. The inch-thick catalog listing courses offered in the spring quarter alone rivals that of a prestigious technical institution; classes include optical alignment techniques, laser systems, and quantum physics. The laboratory also provides remote microwave linkups and on-site classroom facilities for students pursuing degrees or auditing classes at Stanford, UC-Davis, and the National Technological University. LLNL's education program, like Merck's, developed slowly; over a gradual period of evolution, program administrators discovered the best way to oversee the program and serve the needs of the employees. At first, says Michels, they tried to run the program using in-house instructors, but it took too long to put the courses together; moreover, "we couldn't keep up with the new technology." Another hitch was that when the program was first instituted, the different departments within Livermore were not coordinating their courses, says Michels, "so they ended up duplicating efforts, and different departments were offering the same classes." Now, "the continuing education committee meets once a month to determine what seminars or experts to sponsor," says Michels. "If we have a large enough group of people interested in a particular topic, we'll bring the instructor on-site, because then you get real savings in terms of economies of scale. Oftentimes, our senior scientists make these arrangements themselves through their own network of contacts and their professional societies." When it is not economically feasible to present a seminar on-site, LLNL will contract with the National Technological University (NTU), a private, nonprofit institution founded in 1984, to broadcast the program via satellite. Because NTU's instruction is beamed directly to people at work, it is far more cost-effective than sending employees to outside seminars, or arranging for courses in-house. Last year, NTU broadcast 11,000 hours of credit instruction, and 1,695 hours of advanced technology and management programs. It is accredited to award master of science degrees in materials science and engineering, computer science and engineering, and electrical engineering. Says Richard J. Soderberg, NTU's director of advanced technology and management programs, "It used to be that technical professionals' skills were obsolete in five years. Now experts say the rollover is about two to three years." Half a continent away, Exxon employees travel from the firm's headquarters to attend courses at the company's Education Center, located in East Hanover, N.J. The center's curriculum covers science, chemical processes, technology, and tools applicable to Exxon's business interests. Typically, the program is divided into three levels: general-knowledge classes, which offer basic information; applications courses, which arm employees with the tools they need to do their jobs; and state-of-the-art courses, which offer senior scientists and engineers the opportunity to synthesize complex concepts they can then use in research and development. "Because courses which integrate these technical disciplines do not generally exist in universities, we develop the courses internally, in some cases with the assistance of university consultants," says Robert Hofstader, manager of the Education and Development Unit at Exxon's Education Center. Like other companies, Exxon felt compelled to introduce this program because of the rapid rate of technological advancement. "It has served a three-fold purpose," Hofstader says. "New employees learn the use of our systems, managers learn how the systems could impact their particular operation, and those working in the field learn new technology together." Because the costs for mounting these educational programs are so high, smaller high-tech companies may lose their market share because they can't compete in the educational arms race. Since smaller firms can't afford to institute expensive training programs, they not only may lag behind technologically but also may have trouble recruiting top-notch technical staffers who are committed to keeping their skills current to remain employable. "Satellite transmissions, however, like those done by the NTU and other, regional outfits, may ultimately be the salvation for smaller companies and allow them to plug in to these programs at a fraction of the current costs," says management consultant Hanson. "And as education for scientific and technical people becomes a corporate fact of life, satellite programs, which are much more cost-effective, are the future educational vehicle." Linda Marsa is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.

Courses Keep Industry, Government Scientists Competitive

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