Academia faculty

The first edition of Catalytic Asymmetric Synthesis, published in the fall of 1993, was very warmly received by research communities in academia and industries from graduate students, research associates, faculty, staff, senior researchers, and others. The book was published at the very moment that the Food Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States clarified the situation in Chiral Drugs, the word chirotechnology was created, and chirotechnology industries were spawning in the United States and Britain. 

Raul Zamora-Ros, Department of Nutrition and Food Science, XaRTA, INSA, Pharmacy Faculty, University of Barcelona, 08028 Barcelona, Spain Baolu Zhao, State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Institute of Biophysics, Academia Sinica, Beijing, People s Republic of China... 

W. Sue Shafer, University of California, San Francisco I want to return to the philosophy of how departments view their young, untenured faculty. When I was applying for jobs in academia (I didn t actually go there but ended up going to government), there was a philosophy that the department hired you, but you were on trial. You had to make your own way, and either sink or swim. 

Now the members of the manila-envelope-opening committees are the same people who have been generating the 20 percent—and higher—fraction of women Ph.D.s since 1985. Why have these faculty not wondered why more of their women doctorates were not applying to academia That discrepancy should have made the faculty on the manila-envelope-opening committees wonder what that said about their department as a place to create a career. What does that lack of curiosity say about their ability as... 

A satisfactory timescale is now, as we replace those scientists hired in the 1960s. Once that exchange of new-for-old faculty is complete, the door to academia will again be closed for a (long) while. 

We talked about differences between industry and academia, particularly the value systems. In industry, there are clearly metrics for success and a better idea of what success means. The success of employees is more closely tied to the success of the company. In academia, the metrics for success are not as clear. For example, an academic institution may be considered successful if it keeps the student body numbers up. This provides the right number of undergraduates, who pay tuition to keep the institution going. But faculty salary increases and faculty promotions are not tied to that, except for institutions where the faculty spend most of their time doing undergraduate recruiting. 

Industry appears to be more family friendly, so the question became, Why One issue that was raised had to do with retention. Retention is very important in industry. In academia, if a faculty member leaves, you soon have a pile of 200 applications sitting next to you to fill that one job slot. So retention takes on a different character in academia. You want to retain someone if they bring in a lot of money and have national recognition or if they bring something important to the institution—but that may not come until later in their career. In industry, there is a greater push to retain people once they walk in the door. This leads to policies that are more supportive of the community on issues—child care is one—that have been on the back burner for many academic institutions. 

Finally, the expectations for academic faculty are rising everywhere, contributing to what might be perceived to be a hostile environment. Technology, travel, and information overload are all contributors. That is not just in academia, but also in industry. 

Barbara J.W. Cole, University of Maine Listening to the comments of the last few days, it struck me that I have been in academia for 14 years—my whole career, right out of graduate school—and why on earth am I here There has been a lot of very negative talk about the academic life, particularly for a woman faculty member. 

Keith Gubbins Where will we find the potential chemical engineering faculty members in micro- and optical electronics There are very few academic groups in this area now. Klavs Jensen has a nice group of students, but they don t want to go into academia. At least, that is what I m hearing. There s a problem in implementing this idea. 

For academia, that has been studied in terms of the faculty demography and how it has an impact on the organization overall. Jim Hearn, a sociologist, has studied this. His recent studies are about the faculty demography, the difficulties that occur as a result of an aging faculty, and how an aging faculty has organizational implications. 

One of the barriers [to retaining underrepresented groups in academia] may be that the academic environment is not seen as friendly on the faculty level to certain types of people. 

Another key question is, What exactly is the problem The problem is the dearth of diversity in the workforce. One example is the fact that only 18 African Americans and only 22 Latinos are currently employed in chemistry faculty positions by the top 50 institutions as ranked in a recent National Science Foundation (NSF) study. The top 50 institutions have been defined as those receiving the most governmental or private research funds available to academia. It does not mean that these are the best institutions it just means that they are getting the most funds. The net effect of these statistics is that we are averaging less than one African American or Latino per each one of these institutions. Thus the numbers are small. 

Isiah M. Warner, Louisiana State University I think if we look at our discussions here and at the best practice success models, there is a common theme several factors are common from academia to industry. The mentoring component is there. There is buy-in by employees in the case of industry and buy-in by faculty in the case of academics. There are at least three or four components that are in common. Buy-in, mentoring, the critical mass sort of thing, even though it was not quite as apparent in the industry forum. 

Department of Chemistry, The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA Faculty of Chemistry, Jagiellonian University, ul. R. Ingardena 3, 30-060 Krakow, Poland Faculty of Chemistry, Jagiellonian University, ul. R. Ingardena 3, 30-060 Krakow, Poland Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche, Universita degli Studi di Trieste, Via Licio Giorgieri 1, 34135 Trieste, Italy Institute of Chemistry, Academia Sinica, Beijing 100080, People s Republic of China... 

XIAO-TIAN LIANG received his BS degree from the National Central University (China) in 1945 and his PhD degree from the University of Washington at Seattle (USA) in 1951. After postdoctoral work at Harvard University he joined the faculty of the Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. In 1980, he was elected as an Academician of Academia Sinica (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and has served on the advisory editorial boards of Tetrahedron and Tetrahedron Letters, amor g other scientific journals. He coauthored more than 300 scientific papers and reviews, and has written or edited more than ten bcx ks. 

During the last 11 years, these pivotal reports have led most institutions to reevaluate how faculty members prioritize their time and the faculty reward system. Therefore, when contemplating an academic position, an individual should clearly understand the institution s mission and faculty reward system. The faculty candidate should also ascertain whether the assigned duties can be accomplished according to the projected allocation of time and effort and that they are consistent with the faculty reward system. Individuals who select either a college-based tenure- or nontenure-track position should clearly understand that success in academia requires achievement of not only excellence in completion of assigned duties, but also scholarship. ... 

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