New York

The annual meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), held in New York last week, saw chemists address perhaps the biggest problem facing their discipline: why young people are turning their backs on it.

The number of US bachelor's degrees awarded in chemistry fell by 8% between 1997 and 2001, society officials said. If the trend continues, “we could put ourselves out of business”, warned environmental chemist Alan Elzerman of Clemson University in South Carolina.

Speakers told a seminar on 9 September that the discipline's best prospects lie in reinventing the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. The same lacklustre lectures and textbooks have been lulling students to sleep for decades, they said.

The seminar followed on from a three-day meeting in Washington DC in June, which brought together around 50 chemists and science educators. And its conclusions echoed those of the June meeting, with participants agreeing that one reason that courses don't attract students is chemistry's generally poor public image. Chemistry departments also fail to advertise overlapping, 'sexy' disciplines such as nanotechnology or proteomics, they added.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has ploughed $15 million–20 million over the past ten years into initiatives aimed at revamping the chemistry undergraduate curriculum, but the effort needs even more investment, said Eli Pearce of the Polytechnic University in New York, a former ACS president.

But some scientists claim that the ACS's own membership is too old to relate to young people's doubts about chemistry. Nearly 40% of its 163,000 members are over 51 — compared with 11% aged 30 or below. Some seminars “look like something out of a retirement community”, says 31-year-old Darrell Coleman of drug firm Eli Lilly at Research Park Triangle, North Carolina.

Sylvia Ware, an ACS official working with its education committee, says that some of its members aren't facing up to the issue. “I think we underestimate the level of effort needed,” she says. “There won't be major change until the grass roots say we need it.”