Is There Underrepresentation in Current Spectroscopy Curriculums?

The main purpose of college is to educate students in a specific field and equip them with the tools and knowledge they need to enter the workforce. When it works well, college serves as a key stepping stone, preparing students to meet the demands of their future careers.

As a result, it is critical that a university curriculum is built so that students will pick up the necessary skills and knowledge they need to enter the workforce. One current obstacle to hiring young graduates out of college is that they do not possess the skills needed for the jobs employers are looking to fill. This disconnect is an ongoing challenge that universities are combating, and it often requires refining their curriculums on a regular basis.

In this “Pathways in Spectroscopy” clip, Mary Kate Donais, a Professor at St. Anselm College,¹ discusses what an industry-ready curriculum looks like in practice.

Spectroscopy: Which areas of spectroscopy do you feel are underrepresented in traditional coursework, and what would a more industry-ready curriculum look like?

Mary Kate Donais: I've integrated my years in a government laboratory and in industry into my teaching. Solution preparation and sample preparation are often ignored by the textbooks and certainly should be in a curriculum. There's also been quite an evolution of what techniques are really valuable for industry. When I first started teaching, I did not teach Raman spectroscopy, and now I do, and it’s part of my instrumental course. We own a Raman spectrometer in our laboratory, and that was also an instrument purchase that I pushed because I can see its relevance to many areas that our students would be potentially employed by such as pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, and even specialty chemicals. We have a lot of companies in those fields, as well as a lot of instrument companies in the Boston area, and some of those are spectroscopy companies. Raman spectroscopy is one technique I personally never learned and had never used. Also, I did not teach about X-ray fluorescence (XRF), but it is the cornerstone of my research now, so I've integrated XRF into my instrumental course, and it's also taught in our forensic course because it's non-destructive and portable, and you can bring it to a crime scene to analyze things. So XRF is another area of spectroscopy that that I've added to the instrumental and other course, you know, plans that also means that I can't necessarily teach as in-depth another, like the time has to have to still add up to a semester, so, so I might not go into as, as much depth in some other areas, but they're getting more breadth in seeing other spectroscopic techniques.

This is the third part of our conversation with Donais. She and her team published an archaeometry paper several years ago, and it is listed under “Further Reading” for easy access.²

References

(1) Saint Anselm College, Mary Kate Donais. Anselm.edu. Available at: https://www.anselm.edu/about/campus-directory/mary-kate-donais (accessed 2026-06-02).

Further Reading

(2) Jackson, M.; Perrelli, D.; Shelley, J. T.; Donais, M. K. An Archaeometric Investigation into the Former Cataract House Hotel via Elemental Analysis. Spectrosc. Suppl. 2022, 37 (s11), 12–16. DOI: 10.56530/spectroscopy.sh9983a2