Chemistry Dept. Proposes Tutorial; Honors Students Would Do Research In Labs With Post-Doctoral Fellows

The Chemistry Department has placed before the Administration a proposal to institute chemistry tutorial next fall. If approved, this move is expected to influence similar action in the many science departments which do not now offer tutorial instruction.

If the program goes through, next year's junior and senior Honors candidates may elect credit courses involving work in the laboratory of a chemistry post-doctoral fellow. Each fellow would have no more than two tutees working with him. Senior tutees taking full-course tutorial will be required to write a thesis.

Dean Monro yesterday called the proposal "an awfully welcome development. In fact, I think it's great. I hope the other sciences will watch this closely." He thought the other departments might follow suit "if they can manage to provide the necessary manpower."

The natural sciences traditionally have been exempted from tutorial, for three reasons:

*Science students already carry a heavy load of difficult courses. Tutorial would only tend to crowd their schedule more and tempt them to give up non-science courses or essential science and math courses outside their field.

*Students get something resembling tutorial from their lab instructors.

*Science departments lack the necessary tutors willing or eligible to participate.

According to Frank H. Westheimer, chairman of the chemistry Department, the chemists now think differently about the first two objections. Most Department members believe that the undergraduate in chemistry ideally should "follow a particular problem in chemistry by participating in the actual research being carried on." The Department gave the program almost unanimous approval, Westheimer noted.

Tutors Available

The third objection to chemistry tutorial in the past "has been magnificently reversed," said Westheimer. A large increase in the amount of federal grants and the rising prestige of American chemistry has brought large numbers of post-doctorals to Harvard. These fellows are now eligible to act as tutors.

A. M. Pappenheimer, chairman of the board of tutors of the Biochemical Sciences, was very pleased with the proposal, recognising it as "a move to counteract the large transfer of Biology and Chemistry majors into biochemistry." Within the last five years, the number of biochemistry students has increased by over 50 per cent, largely at the expense of Chemistry and Biology concentrators. "I expect this operation will cut us down to size," said Pappenheimer.

The delay in the offering of tutorial in the natural sciences may be partly the result of a 1938 experiment: Physics tried tutorial instruction for one year and then abandoned it in disgust.