Seminars Part I: Why

I am a big fan of seminar series at PUI and MCU institutions.  I am not talking about the internal seminar were the students talk about chemistry or biochemistry in some capstone discipline specific communication course, which has its own value.  I am talking about the seminar series where outsiders come to campus visit with the faculty and students and give a professional presentation.

To the students who get to see other ideas and chemistries played out in the presentations and to potentially interact with faculty members from PhD institutions and regional employers there is great value in a seminar from outside.  There is also great value in their seeing professionally presented presentations so that they can see the good and bad of that art.

In their ideal form the seminar series also gives the hosting faculty an opportunity to interact with outsiders.  Faculty hiring priorities at PUI and MCU campuses sometimes place emphasis on making sure that the panoply of chemistry is covered by a faculty resulting in only a modicum of overlap in their scholarship.  Many PUI faculties are small, but even with a fairly large faculty the diversity of scholarship can make you isolated.  For example: if you have four organic faculty and one is a polymer type, one is bioorganic, the third is a physical organic mechanism inspector, and the last is a methods development/synthetic type, they can talk about organic chemistry, but their diversity means that they generally don't challenge tho other's "expertise" in their research conclusions.  Well chosen outside speakers can provide valuable opportunities to bounce ideas off someone who is in a position to challenge our assumptions and conclusions.  The seminar series can help fight the isolation that sometimes can occur at the PUI/MCU institutions.

Research universities seem to be more focused in their hiring.  They often develop areas of expertise within a department or college to help attract funding resources under shared instrument programs, etc.

The difference between the PUI/MCU and the RO1 may reflect the difference in the focus of the institutions, where the hiring emphasis at teaching focused institutions is on being able to provide expertise across the field in the lecture halls.  This ensures that students are in a position to select an area of focus and appropriate graduate program or career upon graduation.

If the outside seminar series has value this still leaves the question of how to implement a program, which will be the subject of a future post.

T.S. Hall