Editor,
As a former student of Chris Enke, I feel it's ludicrous that he receives an award for excellence in higher education of analytical chemistry.
I'd say that Enke had an attendance rate of roughly 65 percent when I took chemistry 253, a.k.a. quantitative analysis. Enke felt it necessary to take several "business trips" to promote his new book, The Art and Science of Chemical Analysis.
When he was there, he didn't seem too enthused about what he was doing at the time; he seemed more at home in the lab. As if trying to decipher the teaching techniques of Enke and his multiple substitutes wasn't bad enough, his latest and 15th book (the textbook for chem 253) was by far one of the worst pieces of scientific writing I've come across.
If the department read the ICES evaluation forms, it too would know this, for I am positive that a number of my fellow classmates felt the same way.
The book was bland and vague in its explanation of all things analytical and read like stereo instructions that were poorly translated from Japanese to English.
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To contrast, if you open the front cover of my former anatomy textbook by Ellen Marieb, you will find a list of approximately 150 physicians and professionals who reviewed Marieb's work and edited it.
If you open the front cover of Enke's book, you'll find the names of the general editor and the graphics editor and no one else. Was Enke not confident enough to have other analytical chemists review his work?
In addition, it's very difficult to stay awake while reading the text when all the graphics are the same washed-out green color. It's the quality of the textbook that counts, not the quantity.
In retrospect, I'd say I learned two things from Enke's course (actually from his teaching assistants in the lab); I can operate a manual burette with the best of them and I can successfully read a pH meter.
Just to clarify, I am by no means attacking the character or personality of Chris Enke. He's a reasonable man and easy to talk to. As far as I know, his research is top notch. It's his textbook writing skills that are a little below par. And since the Analytical Division of the American Chemical Society placed so much emphasis on this award being based on the text, I felt it necessary to give the student's side of the story from behind the cover of The Art and Science of Chemical Analysis.
Brandon Condrey
UNM student
