Reflections

This section collects the essays from Reflections from the Frontiers (Explorations for the Future: Gordon Research Conferences 1931-2006), GRC's 75th anniversary commemorative publication.

The New Generation
John P. Fackler, Jr.
John P. Fackler, Jr.
Texas A&M University
Laudable Sins

George Pimentel once made a statement that became a classic: “Teaching is to research as sin is to confession; you can’t have one without the other.” That idea has always been part of the GRC tradition: researchers in a discipline educate each other at Gordon Conferences.

During my involvement in GRC, science education was recognized as critical to the development of future generations of researchers. Education was also part of the heritage of GRC as instituted by its founder–the first editor of the Journal of Chemical Education, Neil Gordon. Alex Cruickshank clearly understood this. He once let Dick Holm and me, when we were graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sit in on a morning session of the Inorganic Chemistry GRC at the Holderness School in Holderness, New Hampshire, in 1958. Our adviser, Al Cotton, was an invited participant, and Bob Parry and Fred Basolo were in attendance. For the first time Dick and I were able to associate faces with the names of leaders who were creating a renaissance in inorganic chemistry. Basolo and Parry encouraged chairs of the Inorganic Chemistry Conference to urge speakers to describe the impact of their work on the development of inorganic chemistry.

I took my place as the Inorganic Chemistry Conference chair in 1979 and was subsequently elected to the GRC council. During the next nine years I gained a great appreciation for the legacy of Neil Gordon. Alex Cruickshank became more to me than just a competent director: he also became a friend and confidant. It was a great personal delight that the Alexander M. Cruickshank Lectures were created while I was on the board of trustees. However, the board also had to discuss the consequences and pro-cesses associated with Alex’s eventual retirement.

The board debated two important matters that have influenced GRC: the role education conferences might play in the structure of GRC and the value of holding conferences outside the United States, particularly in Europe. Bob Grasselli helped the board decide on conference sites in Italy and Germany. When I was chair of the board, we encouraged a conference on science education, with Alan Cowley and the late Paul Saltman taking leadership roles. A GRC on chemical education called Innovations in College Chemistry Teaching was held in 1994. The same year Gerhard Pohl and I organized the first education conference in Europe called New Visualization Technologies for Science Education, held in Irsee, Germany. The conference was truly international, with scientists and science educators attending from all parts of the world. I have many fond memories of this conference, set not far from Munich and scheduled in late September just before Oktoberfest.

Although I have most often attended the Inorganic Chemistry Conference, I have also participated in the Metals in Biology, Electrochemistry, and Organometallic Chemistry conferences. Involvement with four science education conferences, however, has convinced me that Pimentel’s statement requires encouragement of a positive, supportive relationship between those whose primary focus is on discovery in science and those who educate society about its worth. The Visualization in Science Education Conference has brought Nobel laureates to the same platform as science museum directors and science writers. At this conference I have also learned that many countries around the world have successfully created environments where discovery and education in science are respected by society. Interactions between science teachers and researchers are indispensable links for a strong, educated society in the modern technological world, and I am hopeful that GRC leadership will continue to build on these relationships.