But others say that what matters is whether students who graduate can get the jobs they want. The only way to find out is “to track these things and to pay attention,” says Steven Corcelli, chair of the American Chemical Society’s Graduate Education Advisory Board. That’s why information like the new Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) report is important, says Corcelli, a University of Notre Dame professor.
by Andrea Widener | November 16, 2015
—Seeking Graduate Students For New Organic Symposium “” Graduate students in organic chemistry are invited to apply for the Young Organic Chemists Symposium, a new program of the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry. Fifty to 75 graduate students in organic chemistry will be selected to present their research and to interact with leaders from academia, industry, and various funding agencies at Boston College during the symposium, which will be held on July 15–18.
by Linda R. Raber | January 18, 2010
Median base salaries for 19992000 chemical engineering graduates with less than one year of technical work experience prior to graduation were 5 to 6% higher than those for the 199899 class at all degree levels. Similarly, inexperienced master's degree and Ph.D. chemistry graduates posted gains of 5 to 6%.
by MICHAEL HEYLIN, C&EN WASHINGTON | September 03, 2001
The survey gathered data as of the week of Oct. 4, 2004, from chemists who graduated between July 2003 and June 2004. It reveals a median salary for inexperienced bachelors degree graduates with full-time permanent jobs of $32,500. This median was up from the $32,000 posted by 200203 graduates a year earlier. The corresponding year-to-year gain for inexperienced Ph.D. graduates was to $65,000 from $63,300. For graduates with masters degrees, there was a slight dip to $43,600 from $44,500. In constant-dollar terms, however, median salaries for inexperienced new chemistry graduates remained depressed. When adjusted for inflation, the median salaries for 200304 graduates at all three degree levels were about 10% below the salaries received by chemists who had graduated three or four years earlier.
by MICHAEL HEYLIN, C&EN WASHINGTON | April 18, 2005
C&EN’s Senior Correspondents Linda Wang and Celia Arnaud recognized this and drove the initiative to pull graduate students into the spotlight and describe their journeys from beginning to end. Our coverage leads with five features on the various stages of the graduate school journey. The first and last of these stories (see pages 18 and 26) focus on experts dispensing advice for students, whether they are contemplating going to graduate school or close to finishing up and preparing to head out into the “real world.”
by Bibiana Campos Seijo | September 10, 2018
—Graduate students lose right to unionize “US labor board proposal says no to unionization at private schools” The US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which oversees unionization efforts, has proposed that graduate teaching and research assistants employed at private universities and colleges no longer have the right to form labor unions.
by Jeff Johnson, special to C&EN | September 24, 2019
—Improving Chemistry Graduate Education “Education: ACS commission calls for major changes in programs, funding nationwide” Chemistry departments need to take a hard look at their graduate programs with an eye toward improving the student experience, according to a report released by the American Chemical Society at a Dec. 10 press conference. The ACS presidential commission that produced the report, “Advancing Graduate Education in the Chemical Sciences,” posits that graduate education, although “productive and healthy,” no longer aligns with the current employment opportunities for chemists. The report urges steps such as decreasing the time required to earn a Ph.D., decoupling student funding from research funding, and establishing a database of graduate student outcomes.
by Celia Henry Arnaud | December 17, 2012
—ACS receives $2.3 million grant to help make graduate education more inclusive “” The American Chemical Society has been awarded a $2.3 million grant over five years from the National Science Foundation as part of an alliance of scientific societies to increase the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in graduate education in the physical sciences. The Inclusive Graduate Education Network is a five-year, $10 million grant led by the American Physical Society (APS). “We realized that this transition between undergraduate and graduate school was a particularly problematic one and that we were losing almost a factor of two of these minority students who are getting bachelor’s degrees but not going on and getting Ph.D.s,” says Ted Hodapp of APS, who is overseeing the APS Bridge Program, which has shown success in bridging the gap in the field of physics.
by Linda Wang | October 20, 2018
The marathon that is graduate school is unlike any other experience in one’s educational training, and it’s one during which graduate students complete their journey to becoming a Ph.D. scientist. Despite all the hurdles and unexpected turns, many graduate students C&EN spoke with say that the ultimate payoff—adding those three coveted letters to their name—is worth the sweat and tears.
by Linda Wang | September 09, 2018
This was 10% higher than the $54,000 median for those graduating a year earlier. For the year before that, 1995-96, the median was $45,000. That was only $1,000 higher than it was for 1989-90 graduates. For inexperienced Ph.D. chemical engineering graduates, the latest year-to-year gain for those with full-time jobs was from $60,000 to $65,000, or 8\%.
by Michael Heylin | March 01, 1999