L.A.S.T.

I’ve coined a new acronym: L.A.S.T. stands for Liberal Arts Style Teaching. I admit it’s an ill-suited acronym and unlikely to catch on.

At the institution I’m visiting, a question was posed to me: At a liberal arts college, does one teach chemistry differently compared to being at an R1 institution? That made me wonder if L.A.S.T. exists,* and if so, is it qualitatively different? Is it superior? Liberal arts colleges tout superior teaching and learning experiences. Do these really play out?

I’ve explored some significant differences for science faculty at liberal arts colleges versus R1 institutions, and class size is certainly one major difference. Having small class sizes allows me to pedagogical things I think would be less effective in larger classes. There is hopefully a lot more back-and-forth discussion between professor and student, and also among students. It’s easier to have students come up to the board and show their work. I know all my student’s names and how each of them are doing in my class, which helps on-the-fly when I’m answering questions. (I have some idea what’s behind the question.) But if we’re talking about class size, you wouldn’t expect much difference between a liberal arts college and an R1 for small classes (specialized upper division electives, perhaps).

Maybe it’s the attitude of the faculty member towards the liberal arts curriculum. Are liberal arts college professors better at looking over the fence and making connections to fields outside their own in their teaching? I do this, but I don’t know if I do so more or any better than my counterpart at an R1. Perhaps it plays out more in office conversations with my students. When a student visits, we talk chemistry, but I often ask the student what other classes they are in and what sorts of things interest them. Maybe that’s unique to me, and if I was an R1 professor I might do the same thing. Except that an R1 professor teaching a large G-Chem or O-Chem lecture would almost never have students visit their office. Students would just go see their TAs if they had questions. So perhaps the milieu of the liberal arts college encourages more frequent direct interactions between student and professor. This also plays out in G-Chem or O-Chem lab where in a liberal arts college, professors are the instructors; at an R1 graduate TAs are the instructors. Or could it be more active learning in the classroom?

The other close interaction a liberal arts college chemistry professor has with students is close mentoring in undergraduate research. At an R1, an undergraduate is often working with a grad student or postdoc, rather than the professor. There are also other opportunities in the community-feel of a liberal arts college that encourages interactions between undergraduates and professors outside the classroom, office or lab. Perhaps there are just as many opportunities at an R1, but I’m guessing most chemistry professors at an R1 only rarely attend these sorts of events – there are grants and papers to write if you aren’t interacting directly with the students and postdocs in your lab.

But I’m still skirting the question of whether there’s such a unique thing as L.A.S.T. If small class sizes and being in a setup that encourages more faculty-student interaction is all that’s needed, then an R1 can perhaps provide the same student experience. In fact, many large R1 institutions have smaller “Honors” colleges within them to do just that. The difficulty with extending to the student body at large is a matter of scale and cost. There’s a reason why private institutions are so much more expensive, and smaller-sized institutions such as liberal arts colleges more so.

As the prime conduit of providing or facilitating the liberal arts education, maybe faculty are the key as to whether students experience L.A.S.T. or not. In chemistry, and the natural sciences more generally, the faculty candidate best suited to a liberal arts college is quite different from an R1. The type of student who opts for a liberal arts college instead of a large public institution might also be different in a number of respects, on average, for a variety of reasons. Maybe there’s a synergy leading to a particular cultural milieu at liberal arts colleges, for better or worse. So maybe it’s not so much that liberal arts colleges have a particular teaching style, but that the culture surrounding teaching and learning is different. Is it superior? That’s the subject of a different blog post.

*A faculty member actually used the phrase “Liberal Arts Style Teaching”; it’s the first time I’ve heard that specific phrase.

Redesigning the Major

If you had to redesign the traditional Chemistry major, so that it could run much leaner with fewer faculty, what could you do? That’s a question I’ve been pondering the past couple of weeks as I’ve written up an informal report related to reviewing the curriculum at a different institution. No faculty were being cut; they’ve just had trouble hiring after several failed searches, and folks are doing an admirable job in trying to keep a bare bones curriculum afloat.

It’s a major challenge to attract majors when you can’t sufficiently offer a suite of courses core to chemistry that flexibly prepares students for a variety of options post-college. If enrollments are low, administration might try to axe your offerings, and you’re caught in a spiral of fighting to just maintain what you have. It’s hard to thrive when you’re just trying to survive.

One approach is to provide multiple entry points. A student with a standard (decent) high school chemistry background, could go into an accelerated G-Chem course that focuses on chemical energetics. This might cover matter-light interactions and thermochemistry from G-Chem 1, and the nexus of thermodynamics-kinetics-equilibria from G-Chem 2. A student who’s had a second year of high school chemistry, typically Honors or A.P., might even be able to skip the accelerated G-Chem course.

A no-prerequisite attractively-themed chemistry course that content-wise covered molecular structure, chemical reactions and stoichiometry basics, and about four weeks of introductory organic chemistry, could be an entry point for students who have little or no background. But such a course might also attract a student with a stronger background who simply found the theme interesting. The Chemistry of Food is likely to be popular and as a theme is well-suited to cover the needed content. The environment, forensics, drugs/medicines, could be possible themes as well. A student who enjoyed this course might then take accelerated G-Chem, or O-Chem, or both!

Having taken accelerated G-Chem, a student could certainly take O-Chem. But offering a sophomore level Inorganic chemistry course would help ensure that a student takes a deeper dive into molecular structure and chemical bonding. Such a course would feature a more in-depth look at the periodic table, a qualitative introduction to molecular orbital theory, some acid-base theory, and an introduction to coordination chemistry. This would prepare the student well for a P-Chem course on quantum chemistry and spectroscopy. A student who’s had accelerated G-Chem would also be able to go on to a P-Chem course covering thermodynamics and kinetics.

Condensing the lab courses into smaller intense units, and separating them from the lecture courses, allows one to spread the workload more evenly. Instead of having a weekly lab attached to each course (typically for only one credit hour), the labs could be more intensive twice-a-week courses that award students three credit hours upon completion, similar to the lecture course. This streamlines student workload, given they have to take other classes, not just yours! It also streamlines faculty workload – right now, the way labs “count” towards one’s teaching load differs greatly across institutions.

I mapped out one example of what I called a “very lean yet robust” curriculum. It won’t quite meet the American Chemical Society (ACS) accreditation, although it is similar in spirit to what the ACS cares about. There are many other ways to design such curricula, but I found it a useful exercise to think about what’s fundamental and how to sequence courses so that the interested student who takes all the core courses comes out well prepared!

A Non First Week

If I wasn’t on sabbatical, this would have been my first week of classes. I would be meeting new students and advisees, establishing the tone in my classes for the semester, training new research students, and attending start-of-the-year meetings. Campus would be abuzz with the rhythm of a new semester and new academic year.

But instead I’m continuing what I’ve been doing the last few months on the campus I’m visiting while on sabbatical – meeting new people, catching up with old friends in the area, making progress on learning a new area of research, and working on some continued research projects. This week I got over a new-research hump – I’m not bumbling as much – but there will be new humps to encounter! I’ve also started working on revising a manuscript after receiving reviewer comments. While I haven’t thought as much about teaching, I have had the opportunity to meet and interact with a few undergraduates. I notice that I automatically slip into ‘professor’ mode even though these are not my students!

This week, when a student asked me what I’m doing during my sabbatical, I told her that it’s the best time to learn something new and challenging, because one actually has the time to muddle around. She was surprised, and said she thought a sabbatical would be about resting! I told her she was right, and that I was taking the time to rest and enjoy my sabbatical, and that my so-called ‘work’ was at a leisurely pace; I have no deadlines or constraints. Perhaps I should have said that mixing work and pleasure can be a source of learning and creativity. I hadn’t considered this aspect until reading Mixing Work with Pleasure – My Life at Studio Ghibli by Toshio Suzuki. 

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed the artwork and story-telling of Hayao Miyazaki, so it was interesting to hear an insider’s view of how Studio Ghibli came to be, and the quirky personalities of Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. I discovered Miyazaki’s work back in the ‘80s through reading the serialized Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind. I learned from Suzuki’s book that the movie version became a catalyst in starting Studio Ghibli. I also learned about some of the unique circumstances surrounding the making of My Neighbor Totoro, and how it surprisingly spawned a burgeoning toy industry of Ghibli products. The toys are the largest money-maker while the movie, when it originally screened, had one of the lowest box office takes.

When I first became a faculty member, I kept a tight separation between work and life outside of work. I wanted to maintain a disciplined schedule, and not have work spill over into every corner of my life – there are other important things in the grand scheme of things. This has worked very well overall. But I wonder if I have curbed my creativity somewhat by not allowing the two spheres to mix. Now that I’m on sabbatical away from home, the two are mixing a little more. That’s made tracking my time a little more interesting, since my schedule has become more fluid. Previously I would confine my work to the time when I was at work. Committing to not bringing work home on evenings and weekend meant I had to be very efficient and not waste time when I was at work. And when I was away from the office, I did not feel I had unfinished work looming.

Given the leisurely pace of my sabbatical work, I don’t feel I have work looming, so perhaps this is a time to try mixing work and pleasure. My Non First Week may be a good kickoff for this experiment!