The Organic Textbook

Waves of publishers reps, with regional sales managers in tow, have washed up on my office doorstep in the last ten days.  With the current textbook edition cycle being about three years it seems that we are always reviewing texts.  Other than the time cost, I don't mind this.

I have a collection of organic texts that goes back to the 1870s.  I even have the original hand written 1878 class notes of a UC Berkeley student.  From this perspective, the teaching of organic really has not changed that much except for the gradual introduction of spectroscopy and physical organic and mechanism into the subject.  In many respects the vast majority of textbooks are still teaching the modern equivalent of Type Theory.

For those who don't know, from the late 1820's there was the Theory of Radicals in which there were fragments which were interchangeable on a center.  This is where the use of R to represent some undefined carbon chain comes from.  Type Theory developed in the late 1840s and early 1850s and followed the Theory of Radicals.  I think it was Gerhardt who pushed the idea of Type Theory starting with the Water Type.  Alcohols and Ethers are water types, in which the hydrogens are replaced by "radicals"(R groups).  Hoffmann later developed the Ammonia Type to discuss what we know as amines.

Anyway, to ask the question that was on mind when I began, if you could start from scratch in creating an organic textbook, how would you organize it?  Don't worry about the marketplace.  I want to know what your perfect text organization would look like.  I don't care about the format of being an e-book or distribution on rolls of toilet paper, it's the content that I am asking about.  Textbook price does not matter for this discussion, so please let's not go there.

My mechanism bias comes out in my thoughts about this.  After the basics of what organic molecules are, I would start with physical properties ending the section with solubility.  Then I would move from water solubility to pH and pKa and then to reactivity starting with the systems with the greatest bond polarity.  I would leave the less reactive hydrocarbon systems to the end of the course.

My logic is that if students can appreciate the chemistry of a polar system like a carbonyl first, when one goes to alkene, allyl, or even aromatic systems they can see that the fundamental reactions are the same, with the added wrinkle that you no longer have the same level of bond polarization.

I am curious to know what others would do if they could create their own book just by thinking about it.

T.S. Hall

Lessons from Toyota

I have been teaching so long that I find myself looking for the teachable moment in just about any experience.  This morning I found myself looking for lessons in the Toyota hearings.

The message from Toyota is that they now recognize they grew too fast in recent years by focusing on sales volume over safety and quality.  They admit to having lost sight of their mission.

I am not surprised.  For many stockholders the purpose of business is to make as much money as possible this quarter.  Worry about the next quarter when it comes.  This short-term thinking leads to a focus on sales over quality and reputation, because quality will not effect reputation until some future quarter.  The banking and real estate collapses also fit this pattern.

What does this have to do with higher education?  In much of higher education the focus in recent decades, particularly in public higher education, has been increasingly on enrollment growth and degrees granted.  But what of the quality of product.  When your institution has 20K or more students there are just too many factors influencing how students advance that a school can't control.

Many schools have begun to emphasized quality and quantity of research scholarship rather than quality of graduate.  After all research quality is easier to build and control than graduate quality.  It's easier to take the smaller population of faculty and using tenure, lab space, etc as a cudgel, get research productivity.  If you then focus on research products, rather than your graduates to represent yourself you can send a reputation message that has little to do with the quality of the product the public is primarily paying for.  The research faculty can bring in postdocs and graduate students  and ignore the education of all but the best undergrads.

As the pundits and politicos cry about the the nation's place in an increasingly science and technology oriented world they may one day come to recognize that the focus on numbers of students and degrees granted over quality of graduate is a contributor to the problem.  This is a drum I beat regularly in this blog.  I do so in the belief that just like the pundits and politicos if I make the case often enough others will pick up the banner and the question of graduate quality might carry some weight in the discussion of the future of higher education.

T.S. Hall

Program Survival

I see that the State of Pennsylvania is developing a plan to eliminate degree programs that have low numbers of graduates in the major from within the State System of Higher Education.  They are not alone as campuses all over the country reconsider the value of disciplines with low numbers of graduates.  This type of thing results in panic on the quad for both faculty and students.

I can see the business rational behind such cost cutting, particularly in a State like Penna. where there are scores of State funded and quasi State funded campuses.  There are at least sixteen campuses of the fourteen schools of the State System of Higher Education, the multitude of campuses of the four “State Related” schools (Univ. of Pittsburgh, Penn State, Temple University, and Lincoln University), and the fourteen State community colleges.  You can’t throw a rock in Penn’s Woods without hitting a state supported campus.  Should all of them offer every degree?

There will be considerable pain in this process, and I predict there will be little discussion of using the quality of product produced as a means of selecting the winners and losers.  So, since I am in a trouble-making mood today (I gave a test this morning).  I am going to propose a radical idea. 

A statewide competition for existence. 

All of this year’s graduates from each degree program will take a single or a series of standardized examinations related to the discipline.  The average grade for the class will be compared from among all the programs receiving state funding.  The bottom programs below a minimal threshold go.  The top programs stay.

This puts educational quality first and allows programs that are doing the best job to stay around regardless of the quality of the school’s football team and other factors that may affect the size of the program.  Faculty would be in the position of standing behind their product. 

Well, I better go some deep breathing before I start grading those exams.

T.S. Hall

"WE! WANT! ... Oh, wait. WE! DON'T! WANT! ..."

This morning's scan of the "newspaper of record" uncovered an article noting the public's discontent with colleges because they "believe that colleges today operate like businesses".

Hey American people, didn't I date you back in the day?  You complain for years about how higher education should be run more like a business and then as soon as we are forced to be more business like by your defunding of higher education you complain.  What's next, dumping American higher education for that sexy exotic international new kid on the quad?  (Wow, I just realized I got outsourced back in college.)

According to the NY Times article, in 2000, 31 percent of Americans believed that college was essential to success.  Today that number is 55 percent.  This change is indicative of a change in mindset that has made higher education a Human Right in the minds of many.  The thing with the perception of something being a Human Right in American is that, like with health care, the populace does not believe that there should be more than a token cost to the individual for such rights.  Of course we also don't appear to want to pay taxes to cover the costs of these things either.  Since health care is largely private that industry can still control their cost to a large extent.  Higher education, on the other hand, is stuck with little ability to control it's cost.

In the higher education case if the public wants us to be less business like it would mean reversing the recent public funding trajectory and going back to a more socialized model of funding.  I am skeptical that this will happen.  So, for us this means being pulled apart as the public demands lower tuition and fees while providing less public support.  And in a short time we can look forward to complaints about the quality of the product we produce, which will not acknowledge the something-for-nothing attitude of our funding scheme.

Hang on folks, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

T.S. Hall

Underrepresentation

I'm a PI on a funded grant, and co-PI on another grant currently under review both of which are designed to encourage members of populations "underrepresented" in the physical and biological sciences to come into science and math degree programs and to pursue PhD degrees.  Between writing the grants and administering them I tend to think a lot about pipeline filling and efforts to change the demographics of populations.

Connecting to the population demographics issue (at least in my mind) is the analysis of political demographics of college faculty, or as some call it, "Faculty Liberalism" (insert ominous soundtrack here).  In this case, some complain that academia is filled with liberals who are out to destroy our way of life.  I wonder if in loudly decrying the perceived problem such pundits do little more than make the problem worse.  By constantly shouting that academia is the bastion of liberalism don't we suggest to moderates and conservatives alike that academia is not the place for them, that they will have to fight every day for their place on the field.

Likewise, when we shout about certain populations being "underrepresented" in the sciences, don't we tell the average young member of those demographics that they will be standing alone should they enter the field.  Sure, the strong willed and confident will enter in spite of the "underrepresentation".  The average student, however, does not want to to stand out either in their school/work environment or in their community, where we have told them they will become an outsider by becoming a scientist.  How many people in the population want to carry the mantel of role model for our entire community.

I believe that in these arguments we would be better served to make non-demographic based cases for people with suitable interests and abilities to enter the field.  Focus on what attributes make a good faculty member or good scientist and invite all interested parties to join the community.  By this I and not talking about young potential scientists who have memorized the periodic table, which is somewhat a measure of the depth of the prior education.  I am talking about possessing an inquiring mind and an ability to recognize patterns and interpret their significance.  Basically, I am suggesting that the content of ones intellectually ability and character should be considered, and those with the potential to succeed should be encouraged and supported to pursue science degrees.  We should place more emphasis on providing resources to those for whom resources would mean a difference in completing and succeeding in the discipline based on financial need and/or a need to help overcome weak background training than we do in pigeonholing everyone into "represented" and "underrepresented" camps.

T.S. Hall

U of A Huntsville

All of us in the academy are touched by the news of the shooting of six members of the Biology department of the University of Alabama Huntsville.  Having gone through the tenure process at more than one university, having seen people both succeed and fail in the tenure process, having served on retention, tenure, promotion (RTP) committees, and having been on a committee that wrote a departmental RTP policy I am particularly impacted.  The tenure process, perhaps more than anything we do in our university work, has the power to change the lives of people.

For today I only wish to express my heartfelt sympathy for the injured, and the families and friends of the injured and dead.  I also express my sympathy for the friends and family of the shooter, who must be in their own particular hell wondering if they might have done or said something different that might have kept this tragedy from occurring at all.

T.S. Hall

Techno- fixes

I have a very quiet class this semester.  These folks don't talk to one another and it's been hard getting them to respond to questions is class.  I thought a little levity might break down the walls and open the lines of communication.  God knows my attempts at humor so far have not worked.

Today in class I noted the alternate application of Clemmemsen Reduction conditions in TV and movies where hydrogen gas is generated with acid and metal, as when the steel wool pad is place in a cup of acid in the microwave on a timer.  The bad guy enters, the timer starts, the hydrogen in the microwave explodes destroying the room and killing the bad guy, who is felled by a flying toaster strudel.

Silence!  Not even a chuckle!

Thus an i-phone app or Powerpoint app development opportunity for you technical folks out there.  I want a cricket app, where with a push of a button I can have the sound of crickets emit from my i-touch or my laptop when my class queries (or jokes) are met with silence.  As an improved app we could offer other noises from nature: chickens clucking, doves cooing, whale song, horses neighing, cows mooing, jackasses braying.  OK, never mind that last example. They might think the instructor had gone back to lecturing.

T.S. Hall