Resumen de Dealing with the Biological Challenge
The bio-technological revolution presents a real challenge to the chemical education community. This challenge is two-fold: 1) the necessity of teaching students the underlying chemical principles and other skills necessary for sucess in the expanding biotechnological workplace and 2) ensuring and enhancing respect from the biological community for the first two years of the chemistry curriculum. In the opinion of the author, we are not doing a particularly good job of meeting this challenge, although progress is being made. As the "doing" of chemistry becomes easier for biologists, there is the real danger that the knowledge of a significant portion of the underlying chemistry will increasingly be viewed as less valuable, and perhaps even superfluous. The three "Trojan Horses" are: synthetic, analytical, and "process" kits; instrumentation coupled with computer "interpretation"; and molecular modeling. The author believes that in order to address the biological challenge head on, we should give serious consideration to the following: 1) reversing the "learning arrow"; 2) embedding molecular and other modeling; 3) incorporating instrumental analysis and chemistry-by-kit. Reversing the learning arrow approaches the chemistry curriculum by starting with large biomolecules first and working toward smaller fundamental units. The author believes that this approach and a more proactive stance on establishing what is in the domain of chemistry is the means by which the biological challenge, spawned by the bio-technological revolution, can most forcefully be addressed.
