CSIE: The Graduate Program



INTRODUCTION.
Graduate school is a time of dramatic transformation, as undergraduate students identified for their scholarly potential are moved through a focused, high energy program of professional development. All of the lessons of graduate school are not learned in the laboratory, however. Through explicit behaviors and implicit messages, graduate students are also influenced by the examples set for them by the faculty and by how the faculty structure the graduate program, the activities and organization of their research groups, and the relationship and relative values of the responsibilities of a scientist. The lessons learned in graduate school traditionally have the most formative impact on graduate students who wish to become members of the professoriate.

The demand for chemists has impacted the look of undergraduate and graduate institutions of higher education, from where all chemists are produced. From undergraduate students pursing the B.S. degree to faculty members, we have become product-oriented: the focus has been on identifying and selecting individuals who could contribute to the growing need for highly trained chemists in a rapidly changing and competitve research environment. For chemistry professors, this shift in emphasis has helped to sharpen the now-familiar tension between the research and teaching obligations that plague higher education and its faculty. During the same time period, it can also be said that chemistry is not just for chemists any more. The demand for a truly chemically literate student body extends to all of the allied biological, environmental, medical and materials engineering sciences. This has caused undergraduate and graduate curricula to respond to the need to improve the education for a broad base of students, beyond those who will identify themselves as ìchemists."

DEVELOPING THE SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING AND LEARNING.
At present, graduate students in chemistry Ph.D. programs receive a great deal of individualized attention towards their scholarly development as researchers. By default, faculty members are part of the area we call ISIE: Interdisciplinary Studies at the Interface of Education. The CSIE Graduate Program broadens the structure within our existing Ph.D. program and attends to the ISIE development of those graduate students who are contemplating careers in higher education. We seek to affect science education at all levels by improving the professional development of these individuals.
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In our program, ISIE development is not to be a second-seat activity to the laboratory research component of the graduate education. Participation in the program will emphasize the potential for excellence in both research and teaching that should characterize future faculty. As in the usual practice for the development of research skills, students in the CSIE program will work to create their independent identities as productive scholars. In this program, we are explicitly acknowledging scholarship in the areas of curriculum development and implementation, classroom research, and additionally that skills in classroom instruction can be fostered. Furthermore, ISIE encompasses the wide range of responsibilities faced by faculty members in their work, such as mentorship, authorship and professional citizenry.

Developing ISIE scholarship in future faculty does not require a specialized Ph.D. in Education Science, but it does require a broader vision of professional development than the traditional "TA Training Program" can provide. Just as is true for and interdisciplinary research scholarship, ISIE scholarship begins with the best professional Ph.D. education that can be had in the discipline. Understanding chemistry is the foundation on which to build the scholarship of teaching and learning in chemistry.


Program
Title

Year(s)
Offered

Eligible Participants
(1=first-year)

GAANN Fellows

X

1996-1998

1, 2
CSIE-PFF Fellows

X

1998-

1
Teaching Internship

X

1994-

2, 3, 4 (with previous GSI experience)