Transformative Synthesis Funding

In recent years, a number of research institute/research university folks have come through my office during visits to give seminars.  A common comment from them is that at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUI) and terminal MS granting programs, a research program focused on synthesis is a fools errand.  

By the time an undergraduate or MS student has the skills to produce, purify, and characterize something they are gone off to a PhD program or a job as a research associate.  Given the constant need for the faculty member to start from scratch on lab skills development with the next student the pace of progress is glacial.  Given the emphasis of funding agencies on transformative research, which has made funding for synthesis harder to obtain, the combined challenges can make organic synthesis in PUIs and MS programs a career dead end for the faculty member.  While there are notable exceptions, in most cases those exceptions tend to groups where there are postdocs who, regardless of where their names appear on the authors list in papers, tend to carry the weight of the research progress.

The general assumption is that training students in advances skills is part of their college education and why we pay taxes to support higher education.  Unfortunately it does not work that way.  For instance in California public higher education institutions there is no allocation in the funding formula even for research space in campus buildings to support undergraduate or faculty research.  Only graduate students generate space under the formula.

With increased pressure on faculty at PUIs and MS programs to get external funding to support research programs, the synthetic chemist faces the prospect of loosing lab space and/or resources from the university.  So, while the slow rate of return makes it difficult to get grant funding for synthetic projects, the university increasingly demands that programs be self supporting, make such programs a risk to ones career development.

Oddly, graduate programs appear to value the training synthetic organic students get.  I also somewhat regularly hear from pharma where they can use all the well trained synthetic organic people I can send them.  So, we have one of those fundamental disconnects that plague society.  We produce something of value, but no one wants to pay the cost of production.  

So, how can we support training undergraduate and MS synthesis?  

Damn, got to get back to the hood, so you will have to wait for my ideas.