Abstract Chemistry is one of the majors which is relevant to our lives. The concepts of Chemistry are used to explain many things that happen around...

Abstract

Chemistry is one of the majors which is relevant to our lives. The concepts of Chemistry are used to explain many things that happen around us. In addition, chemistry plays an important role in the American economy by providing a lot of job positions for American employees. However, due to the unstable economy of the United States in the past, many new graduates still struggle with finding a job, and some of them have to work in different fields from their majors. By comparison to the unemployment rate of the new graduates during these past years to the current, the reason of new graduates who struggle in landing jobs is working experience. Internship in Chemistry is a bridge which connects between colleges and careers. It should be included in the undergraduate program in order to help new graduates in finding a good job and to improve American economy.

Chemistry is a major which uses theory and experimentation to study matters, physical substances and synthesis reactions. It is a board major which can combine to other fields such as Chemistry and Biological Sciences, Chemical Physics, Chemical Synthesis and Reactivity, Material or Polymer Sciences and so on. According to the definition on the website of the college of chemistry of the University of California, Berkeley, the Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemistry prepares “students for careers as professional chemists and serves as a foundation for careers in other fields such as biology and medicine” (para. 1). Chemistry plays a critical role in developing economic growth and improving our quality of life. There are a lot of chemical jobs in the United Sates such as analytical chemists, chemical engineers, healthcare scientists, clinical biochemists, forensic scientists, pharmacologists, research scientists, toxicologist. To illustrate, analytical chemistry job is one of these jobs which plays an important role in the life and the American economy. According to Darlene Peer, a write of the Demand Media, in her article “What Job Would I Get with a Degree in Applied Chemistry?,” analytical chemists, also known as applied Chemists, perform and analyze samples to get the needed information to make the right decisions when moving a product from development to commercialization such as testing in maintaining food safety or cosmetic products. Peer also says that “Analytical chemists have a median annual base salary of “$70,000 if they possessed a bachelor's degree” (para. 3). This job provides the high paying job salary to solve the unemployment problem in the United States and the American economic stably by exporting from many safety products. Analytical skills and problem-solving skills are two necessary in this major that help the employees to land jobs. According to Peer, analytical chemists should be capable of a great deal of trial and error on their part to arrive at a solution in their efforts to research and develop new and improved chemical products, processes, and materials (para.1). It is hard to many students while they only have experience from school laboratories. Many new graduates cannot find the jobs in this field because with the laboratory skills, they usually have many trouble in applying their skills to the real life. Therefore, internship is a good way to help new graduates to have a better chance to find the job.

Chemistry is relevant to our daily lives because it is not simply to study chemical reactions or to remember the structure of molecules. It is about using the learning concept and applying in the real situations. In other ways, chemistry contains a lot of the useful and fun facts. For example, do you know that lemon contains more sugar than strawberries? It sounds hard to believe because lemons are more sour than strawberries. If a student studies chemistry, he or she may able to explain this fact. According to the book Eclectic Medical Gleaner, lemon contains a little more than eight percent of sugar, whereas strawberry contains six percent of sugar (388). However, lemon also contains three to six percent of citric acid, which dominates its sweetness and tastes sour. The strawberry contains less sugar, but it is sweeter than lemon because strawberries rarely have any acidic content. The amount of acidity in fruit explains why lemons contain more sugar, it but taste sourer than strawberries. Furthermore, by working in the laboratory, chemists can extract acid citric in lemon to product many useful products such as making cosmetic masks or producing cleaning products. Thus, chemistry is not simply a learning concept in order to memorize some theories. It is a useful subject and is important to be studied, because it uses the concepts to explain a lot of meaning and interesting facts in our daily life.

Chemistry also plays an important role in the American economy. In the article “American Chemistry Council Publishes 2015 Comprehensive Economic Profile of $801 Billion Business of American,” Patrick Hurston, a senior director of the American Chemistry Council states that “[Chemistry] is also one of America’s largest manufacturing industries, an $801 billion enterprise providing 804,000 high-paying jobs” (para, 1). It provides a lot of occupations for thousands of careers to improve the American job market issues. According to Hurston, the chemical industry also pays its employees salaries and purchases services such as transportation, contract workers, warehousing, maintenance, and accounting. It generates a lot of jobs in many different fields. Moreover, many of the products are manufactured from the chemical industry. Plastics, metal and alloys, pharmaceuticals, and even foods are chemistry based products. the Chemical industry is a wide range of raw materials from air and minerals to oil. According to “United States Top 10 Exports,” pharmaceuticals involves “$47.3 billion,” and organic chemicals provide “$38.8 billion” in American trade markets (para. 6). These are the two Chemistry industries which provide the most benefits for the American economy. Thus, chemistry is an important major which involves to help the American economy stably in the period of the global economy slowing down and leads the American economy to be more efficient to be competitive with the global economy.

However, it is hard for new Chemistry graduates to find a high salary job because of the the working experience, and they to have work in the different majors. Without working experiments, they are offered with a low salary job, so many graduates do not find a job in the direct field. The analysis of American Community Survey reports that “74 percent of STEM graduates did not have STEM jobs” (para. 3). Chemistry is in a STEM major, and many students do not work in their related majors. They find a job in different fields with the high salary offering and not many working experience requirements. According to Susan J. Ainsworth, a manager at American Chemical Society and a writer and editor for Chemical & Engineering News, in the article “New Bachelor-Level Chemists Face Grim Job Market,” there is a story of Scot who graduated with a chemistry degree in New York in May 2011. He spent six months in searching a chemistry job and landed a process development chemist position in Ohio. After spending a few months unsuccessfully searching for another chemistry position for a higher salary, he decided to take his career in an entirely different direction. His skills in Website design have recently given him a position in search engine optimization. Ainsworth also mentions that “like Scott, many other fledgling B.A. and B.S. chemical professionals have been struggling to find jobs in their chosen discipline” (Ainsworth, 89). Because other fields offer the higher salary, many graduates change their majors after graduating. Moreover, an American Chemical Society (ACS) survey of 2013 graduates reports that “14.9 percent were unemployed job seekers five months after graduation, up from 12.6 per cent in 2012… About 25% of chemistry graduates go on to work in a directly related field, and most fall under the private, for-profit industry” (Ainsworth, 92). Chemistry graduates cannot land a good job with simply having a B.S degree because they do not have enough required experience from the companies. Currently, some reforms in chemistry education provide schools a way to help chemistry student to prepare for their career which are the best jobs in future. According to figures from the American Chemical Society’s (ACS), last year’s chemistry graduates in America saw the job market improving, “with unemployment falling from nearly “15% to 12.4%” (Ainsworth, 92). From the data of this report, the rate of unemployment has improved three percent. It is a significant change to the American education and American economy. The challenge of the Chemistry major in finding jobs is an important issue to the American economy and education because it may lead to unequal majors such as the cases of some majors having more students than other majors. It affects the GDP of the country because the business of chemistry is one of America’s largest industries as mentioned above.

Chemistry education is more and more preparing chemistry students to have good skills to be competitive to a global job market such as improving experiences by internship programs. In the article “Internships Provide the First Step Toward Career Success,” Ainsworth says that internship in Chemistry is a job training which provides Chemistry experience by learning from the more experienced professionals (Ainsworth, 43). It is a bridge from college to career. The internship program is the most important thing that chemistry major focuses on to help students to prepare for future jobs. Working in Chemistry major is applying the theory to the real life. Thus, there is a huge problem with those who do well in school but cannot apply in the context. Moreover, the Chemistry education has to prepare students to have one-year internship before graduating. It can help chemistry students have more knowledge and experience and to become more enthusiastic in their majors. Hence, chemistry students will be more productive and better contributors to society after graduating.

The internship program provides students, as well as, new graduates skills through college course work and applies in real life. Work experience is also a critical element of landing a job before graduating with a B.S. in chemistry. The internship helps students gain more experience and is a great way to generate more work samples for the professional portfolio which give students real accomplishment stories for the resume and online profiles. According to "New Bachelor-Level Chemists Face Grim Job Market Industrial Experience, Leadership Roles Help Some Grads Land That First Position," there is an example of Khan, who graduated from the University of Oklahoma last month. She gained research experience during summers, designing and testing and filtration systems for water purification. She also has gained industrial experience through summer internships doing analytical R&D work at Celanese and process design work at Dow Corning (Ainsworth, para 20). The internship helped her have working experiences after her graduating. Thus, internship program provides students skills to practice in real life in order to have more experiences, and they have more chance to land a better job after graduating.