Ep. 28: What does industry want new chemists to know?
Welcome to “Analytically Speaking,” the podcast from LCGC International and Spectroscopy.
In this episode, podcast co-hosts Dr. Dwight Stoll and Dr. James Grinias talk with Dr. Molly Atkinson, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Texas in Denton, TX, and her graduate student David Hamilton. Atkinson and Hamilton are experts in Chemistry Education Research (CER), and they recently published a paper discussing results of a survey of bachelors-level chemists working in industry that asked them “What does industry want new chemists to know?”. The paper, published earlier this year in the Journal of Chemical Education, generated quite a lot of buzz on analytical chemistry social media.
In the conversation we talk about highlights from the article, and touch on potential future work that could fill in knowledge gaps identified by the first survey. The survey revealed some trends that will be familiar to readers of LCGC Magazine. For example, the surveyed chemists indicated that liquid and gas chromatography are two of the top five most important instrumental techniques that new chemists entering industry should know how to use. On the other hand, the survey also revealed some surprising results - for example, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy was not in the top-five instrumental techniques, despite that NMR occupies a prominent position in most undergraduate chemistry curricula in the United States. Finally, the guests and co-hosts discuss a bit about how Chemistry Education Research “works”, for listeners who are less familiar with this discipline than other more traditional research areas.
Literature Discussed:
- Hamilton, D.; Castillo, A.; Atkinson, M. B. Survey of Instrumentation Use in Industry: What Does Industry Want New Chemists to Know? J. Chem. Educ. 2024, 101 (5), 1883–1890.https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.3c00990.
- Connor, M. C.; Raker, J. R. Instrumentation Use in Postsecondary Instructional Chemistry Laboratory Courses: Results from a National Survey. J. Chem. Educ. 2022, 99 (9), 3143–3154.https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c00415.
- Cui, Q.; Harshman, J. Qualitative Investigation to Identify the Knowledge and Skills That U.S.-Trained Doctoral Chemists Require in Typical Chemistry Positions. J. Chem. Educ. 2020, 97 (5), 1247–1255.https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.9b01027.
- James, N. M.; McKenna, M. S.; Mishra, A. Toward Collaborative Dialogue: Unpacking the Researcher–Educator Divide to Advance Chemistry Education. J. Chem. Educ. 2024, 101 (8), 2960–2965.https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.3c01321.
More about our hosts:
Dwight Stoll, PhD:
Dwight R. Stoll is a professor of chemistry at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. He received his PhD from the University of Minnesota, under Professor Peter Carr, working on the development of fast, comprehensive two-dimensional liquid chromatography (2D-LC). Stoll’s current primary research focus is on the development of 2D-LC for both targeted and untargeted analyses. Active research projects in his laboratory touch on most aspects of multidimensional separation methodologies, including optimization strategies, characterization of selectivity in reversed-phase LC, instrument development, and applications in biopharmaceutical analysis. Stoll is the author or co-author of more than 80 peer-reviewed publications and six book chapters and has instructed numerous short courses in 2D-LC. In 2011 he was the recipient of LCGC’s Emerging Leader in Chromatography Award. In 2017 he received the Georges Guiochon Faculty Fellowship, and was recognized with an Agilent Technologies Thought Leader Award. He is also a member of LCGC’s editorial advisory board and is the editor of the “LC Troubleshooting” column in LCGC.
Jerome Workman, Jr., PhD:
Jerome (Jerry) J. Workman, Jr. is the Senior Technical Editor for LCGC and Spectroscopy. He has held positions as CTO, executive VP, senior research fellow, director, and senior scientist at companies of all sizes, from start-ups to world-leading corporations. He has been an adjunct faculty member of four universities and advised multiple graduate students. He has more than 75 U.S. and international patent applications and 30 issued U.S. and international patents and multiple trade secrets, as well as 500+ technical publications, and 20 reference book volumes on a broad range of spectroscopy and data processing techniques. He has received multiple awards from scientific societies, and has taught annual courses in spectroscopy, chemometrics, and statistics for the AOAC, ACS, ISA, FACSS, and at several universities and corporations. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemists (FAIC), the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), and the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK (FRSC, CChem, CSci). Jerry holds B.A and M.A degrees from Saint Mary's University of Minnesota, and a PhD degree from Columbia Pacific University working in near-infrared spectroscopy. He is an alumnus of both Columbia University Business School and the MIT Sloan School of Management.
About the Analytically Speaking Podcast:
Analytically Speaking, the podcast from LCGC and Spectroscopy, addresses important issues in separation science and analytical spectroscopy. Topics include new analytical techniques, methods, and approaches; the latest trends; advances in instrument and software technology; practical solutions for specific applications; recent papers in the scientific literature and their applicability; challenges and solutions for data analysis and interpretation; analytical chemistry theory and fundamentals (from advanced research to tutorials and troubleshooting); and more. Our regular hosts are Dwight Stoll, PhD, a professor of chemistry at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, and Jerry Workman, PhD, a spectroscopist, noted author, and currently the Senior Technical Editor of Spectroscopy and LCGC. Dwight covers separation science and Jerry addresses spectroscopy related topics.
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