Reforming Doctoral Education through the Lens of Professional Socialization to Train the Next Generation of Chemists.

Several national organizations in the United States have questioned the effectiveness of doctoral education in chemistry in preparing and training doctoral students for their desired professional pathways outside of academia. This study investigates the knowledge and skills that chemists with a doctorate across academic and nonacademic job sectors perceive to be necessary for their careers and the ways that these chemists require and/or value certain skillsets over others depending on their job sector. Based on a prior qualitative study, a survey was distributed to gather knowledge and skills needed by chemists with a doctorate in different job sectors. Findings based on 412 responses provide evidence that many 21st century skills beyond technical chemistry knowledge affect success in many types of workplaces. Further, academic and nonacademic job sectors were found to require different skills. The findings question the learning goals of graduate education programs that exclusively target technical skills and knowledge mastery versus those programs that incorporate concepts from professional socialization theory to broaden their scope. The results of this empirical investigation can be used to illuminate those learning targets that currently are less emphasized, to provide all doctoral students with the greatest opportunities for career success.

A Call for Data-Driven Networks to Address Equity in the Context of Undergraduate Biology.

National efforts to improve equitable teaching practices in biology education have led to an increase in research on the barriers to student participation and performance, as well as solutions for overcoming these barriers. Fewer studies have examined the extent to which the resulting data trends and effective strategies are generalizable across multiple contexts or are specific to individual classrooms, institutions, or geographic regions. To address gaps in our understanding, as well as to establish baseline information about students across contexts, a working group associated with a research coordination network (Equity and Diversity in Undergraduate STEM, EDU-STEM) convened in Las Vegas, Nevada, in November of 2019. We addressed the following objectives: 1) characterize the present state of equity and diversity in undergraduate biology education research; 2) address the value of a network of educators focused on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics equity; 3) summarize the status of data collection and results; 4) identify and prioritize questions and interventions for future collaboration; and 5) construct a recruitment plan that will further the efforts of the EDU-STEM research coordination network. The report that follows is a summary of the conclusions and future directions from our discussion.

Large-Scale Models of Radiation Chemistry and the Principle of Detailed Balancing.

Large-scale kinetic models containing more than 50 homogeneous reaction steps have been developed to help understand the behavior of actinide solutions in various circumstances. One specific objective is to understand the behaviors in nitrate solutions as such solutions are used in actinide separations. A challenge arises in developing these large-scale models while ensuring compliance with the principle of detailed balancing because it can be very difficult to identify all embedded reaction loops. These loops can violate the principle of detailed balancing either by consisting of reversible steps that do not meet Wegscheider's condition or by having unopposed irreversible steps that cause illegality. Here we report the development of DETBAL, which is a software code that systematically identifies a basis of reversible loops and a basis of all loops within the model, and then automatically checks for illegal loops. We apply DETBAL to two recent large-scale models of the radiation of nitrate solutions, show that these models violate the principle of detailed balancing in many ways, provide potential solutions to these violations, and demonstrate the effect of some of these modifications.