Sussex Prepares For Crunch Meeting On Chemistry

Wed, April 26, 2006

Source: Guardian Unlimited

A rescue plan for the embattled chemistry department at the University of Sussex will go before an emergency academic meeting next month...

A rescue plan for the embattled chemistry department at the University of Sussex will go before an emergency academic meeting next month where its fate will be decided.

The university has scheduled an extraordinary council meeting for May 15 when a review of the department will go to members for consideration.

The council was not due to meet until the end of the summer term in June.

The university senate, the ruling body on academic matters, ordered the review after the university's vice-chancellor, Alasdair Smith, was last month called to give evidence before an emergency meeting of the Commons science and technology select committee examining the planned closure.

In a statement to staff after making the decision to axe chemistry, Prof Smith said chemistry was a "difficult recruitment area." He said: "Overall, retaining a chemistry department in its present form, operating across the full discipline, would cost us an extra £750,000 with no guarantee of long-term success in recruitment or research."

The Royal College of Chemistry and Sir Harry Kroto, one of three Nobel prize winners from the Sussex chemistry department, immediately attacked Prof Smith's decision, warning that "no university can claim to be a real university without a chemistry department".

However, Prof Smith did not revoke his decision. Instead, he later told the select committee that chemistry, unlike physics, was a difficult science to maintain and dwindling student numbers had made the department unviable in its present form.

Gerry Lawless, the department's head, has strongly denied that chemistry is a struggling discipline at Sussex and described the decision to close the department as a "crazy idea ... absolute madness".

Dr Lawless said the unfilled posts in the department, which included several created by retiring chemists, could easily be filled without any cost to the university.

Dr Lawless, who was also called to give evidence at the Commons hearing, said five posts that remain unfilled could have been "entrepreneurial posts", which would have been cost-neutral to the university.

He said he remained hopeful the university council would reject Prof Smith's proposal to axe chemistry and merge the department with biology.

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