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One of the most telling trends of the 1990s was a change in post-graduation plans of bachelor's degree-holders. Traditionally, about one-third went to work, one-third to graduate school, and one-third to other graduate programs.

A new set of programs, some recently established and some in the proposal stages, aim to give you another set of choices. Enter the professional MS degree, a hybrid of these traditional choices that blends training in both research expertise and business skills.

The largest of these efforts is the Science Masters program, supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, based in New York, N.Y. Sloan's approach is to establish choices outside the traditional PhD terminal degree in eight disciplines: bioinformatics, biotechnology, chemistry, computational sciences, environmental science, mathematics, medical-related, and physics. Given the interdisciplinary nature of chemistry, someone with a chemistry BS could pursue many of the 27 fields of study in the Science Masters program.

Another MS program at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. prepares students for research-oriented careers in pharmaceutical firms. The program is a result of a close partnership between Schering-Plough Corp., Merck & Co., and Stevens to produce highly skilled chemists at the pre-PhD level.

What these programs grapple with is trying to answer how someone with these degrees could fit in the research world. "We believe that theoretically among other things they could be liaisons between the people who are fully prepared to do research-the PhDs-and areas like intellectual property rights, regulatory affairs and other realms," says Sheila Tobias, a consultant and writer based in Tucson, Ariz. and the outreach and dissemination coordinator for the Sloan Science Master's Outreach Initiative.

A new MS program proposed by Andrew Barron, the Charles W. Duncan-Welch Chair of chemistry and a professor of material science at Rice University in Houston, Texas, aims to do just that. Barron has submitted his program in chemical catalysis to Sloan for next year's round of funding. Students would be trained in skills across the entire field of catalysis applications-from petroleum cracking to bulk chemicals to biocatalysis, as well as in business and communications. The program isn't designed to address what PhD programs do, such as developing new catalysts, but would be involved in applications such as industrial scale-up, chemical engineering, bioengineering, and environmentally friendly, or "green," catalysts.

Letters of support for the new program have been provided by Akzo Nobel, the largest Dutch chemical company; Kellogg, Brown and Root, an engineering firm; SABIC, a Saudi Arabian oil company; and Union Carbide, all of whom have a major presence in the Houston area. They are also helping in terms of curriculum guidance, identifying what skills are useful to them, and setting up an internship program. Outside of technological skills, these firms have said that that honing oral and written skills, management know-how, entrepreneurship, and familiarity with intellectual property rights, product development and marketing, even how to use PowerPoint are high on their list of desired nontechnical skills. Eventually these workers will be able to "talk the language of multiple stages of a product," says Barron.

Will jobs be available for these types of trainees? "Yes," says Barron, industry would hire people with these skills, noting only if industry is in a hiring phase, since the private sector is cyclic in its upscaling and downsizing practices.

Sloan is also sponsoring a two-year professional MS program in biosciences at the Keck Graduate Institute in Claremont, Calif to train students to work in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry. The first class of 28 started this fall, with a little over half of the students coming in with biology and biochemistry degrees and three with chemistry BS degrees.

The courses will cover science and technology as well as business, management, and communications. "The idea is to train generalists rather than research scientists," says Greg Dewey, a physical chemist by training and a professor at Keck.

In many bioscience industrial settings the emphasis is on high throughput technologies, he explains, biology on a chip as it were. "Chemists are one of the best trained to move into this area," notes Dewey. As with most of these programs, students will do summer industry-sponsored internships between their first and second years, as well as a thesis project.
Marc Doble, a member of Keck's first crop of students, graduated with a BA in chemistry three years ago and immediately went to work in an academic lab in Boston. "I was trying to decide whether I wanted to go to medical school or go into biotech," remembers Doble. "One of my professors from school mentioned the program to me. I was impressed with its new approach to combining cutting-edge science and business."

Doble says that it was the hybrid nature of the program that attracted him in the first place: "I couldn't find another program that integrates these two areas more thoroughly, if at all. Often there are PhDs who have little or no business training, or MBAs who have little or no exposure to science. I think the program at Keck is trying to fill that need."

The whole point of these new and proposed programs is to create novel options for baccalaureate degree holders. "We don't think the BS person has many," says Tobias. "We think that an ambitious student going out into the world of work with a BS, unless it's in computer science, is probably going to have a low ceiling in the long run and in the short run will probably be a techie."

But will these new MS degrees be viewed as a consolation prize to not obtaining a doctorate, and perhaps more importantly, will this thinking be a sticking point to enticing students to enroll? "Yes and no," says Tobias. "I would speculate that the answer to that is generational [among chemistry faculty]. My observation is that younger faculty are very interested in these programs. One, because they realize that the world has turned and a lot of the older faculty don't want to believe that. And, they fully expect the research funds, especially in biosciences and maybe chemistry, to come from the private sector in the future."

It's too soon to determine whether these programs are creating a niche for themselves because the first class will be out on the job market in 2002. "Success will really depend on the programs' ability to get to hiring managers, not human resources specialists," says Tobias. The challenge, she says, will be to get hiring managers to tell HR: 'I'm looking for someone with advanced training in chemistry, not necessarily to the PhD, and who also has a good understanding of financial statements, regulatory arrangements, property rights, has learned communication skills and teamwork experience, and isn't an engineer."
James Harrison, a professor of chemistry at Michigan State University in East Lansing and creator of the MS program in computational chemistry there, mentions two other groups necessary for success. It's a matter of getting to two audiences: BS and BA students and those students' advisors. "Chemists are a traditional lot," says Harrison, adding that as a group they're not likely to quickly jump on the next educational bandwagon.

Michigan State's program, which also couples computational courses with business management and communications, started about a year ago, with two students potentially planning to start next fall. "That's where it stands," he says. "We've been slow to recruit." Harrison attributes this to the strong economy in that BS chemistry degree holders are going after jobs right after graduation, but he is confident that it will catch on. Industrial sponsors are behind it.

The story behind Michigan State's program reflects the real need for these new hybrid degrees. Harrison, who says he falls into the traditional chemist lot at times, remembers that at first he was reluctant to bring in the business courses, but some of his former PhD students who now work in industry convinced him to add them. The former students recalled that they had to learn the nonscience component of their jobs "the hard way," by trial and error on the job. "This was very telling to me," he concludes. Potential students in Harrison's program may choose to complete a Certificate Program in Business Management and Communication.

Karen Young Kreeger is a freelance science writer based in Ridley Park, PA.