C&EN: Survey indicates the most desired skills for entry-level chemistry from industrial chemists
Also in this week's C&EN, this very interesting news about a survey (and J. Chem. Ed. paper by Hamilton, Castillo and Atkinson) (article by Krystal Vasquez):
...To answer this question, Hamilton and his colleagues surveyed chemists from 80 chemical-related companies. The researchers found that professionals want chemists with bachelor’s degrees to have some expertise in mass spectrometry, liquid chromatography, gas chromatography, ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, and infrared spectroscopy (J. Chem. Educ. 2024, DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.3c00990).
They also value chemists that have good communication, collaboration, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills.
The researchers then compared their survey results to existing literature about instrumentation and other skills being taught in undergraduate courses. Hamilton says that most undergrad lab courses do “a decent job” of giving students access to most of these top-five instruments. “But I think we could definitely be doing a better job.”
It's not surprising that LC and GC are up there, but I'm a bit surprised that mass spec is up there as well. What is weirder to me is that basic maintenance was not a skill set (sub skill set?) that was not called out in the article and/or the survey results. Nevertheless, it sounds like there wasn't a lot of data out there about this, so this is really great that the authors put together this survey.
(...why doesn't ACS do this?...)