Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - New Chemistry Building [PAGE 17]

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tinuous work and rapid progress by the pupil are more likely to be secured.

STANDARD COURSES

In different institutions in which the training in chemistry serves the very same purposes, there is too little agreement in regard to the weight, the content, a n d the quality of the regular courses. In many universities and colleges, the course in inorganic chemistry based on High School chemistry is standardized, a n d demands two or three classroom periods and six hours of laboratory work weekly for twenty-four to twenty-eight weeks. But the graduates of one large university tell me t h a t their course in this subject is inferior in quality and extent to the average High School course, and t h a t previous work in t h e science is neither required for admission to it nor recognized in any way when existent. Courses of all kinds, intermediate between these extremes, are common. Now, the establishment of a more uniform standard is most desirable for many reasons. Migration from one school to another is rapidly increasing. Schools of medicine axe requiring previous college work, but the boy who has had about half a course each in inorganic chemistry and in qualitative analysis or organic chemistry can neither be admitted, nor can he be directed to any course in which his peculiar deficiencies can be made up. The student who decides to move to a school of engineering often finds t h a t he has been provided with a similarly extensive, but superficial, preparation which leaves him a misfit. When the student a t t e m p t s graduate work in another institution, he encounters the same handicap. Naturally, a slight course in inorganic chemistry can be followed only b y a course in mechanical qualitative analysis, such as prevailed forty years ago, and any attempts in each successive course t o develop a grasp of the modern aspects of the science must be given up. A separate and distinct course in physical chemistry, taken later, can never solve the problem. In such a course only a few illustrations can be given, whereas continuous application of the same principles in study and in the laboratory during the whole training is necessary to success. The student keeps the different courses in separate, water-tight compartments in his mind, and only a genius will make the thorough-going applications and connections t h a t are required t o weld t h e whole into a science. Modem chemistry simply teems with ap(H)