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CHEM LIB

Women have long had little to do with the field of chemistry beyond dissolving coffee crystals in HO, say, or oxidizing strips of bacon by placing them on a heat-conductive surface. Photosynthesis generally meant reorganizing the family snapshot album. But opportunities have expanded. According to a study by the American Chemical Society, women graduates in chemistry now get better salary offers than their male classmates. In 1979 the median starting salary of women with a bachelor's degree in chemistry was $15,600, compared with $15,000 for men. For women who specialized in chemical engineering, the median starting salary was $20,000, vs. $19,800 for men.

Says Robert Neuman, who directs an A.C.S. department that is still called manpower studies: "A lot of employers are beginning to wake up to the fact that they have discriminated against women in the past." No similar burst of demand for females is reported in academe. In college chemistry departments, women make up just 2.5% of full-time chemistry faculty.

SOLVENCY U. When University of Miami students demonstrated against rising tuition a couple of years ago, they accomplished nothing--except getting 31 of their number arrested. But then Student President Allan Lubel, 21, a psychology major, got a brainstorm. Since administrators blamed Miami's money problems on declining enrollment, why not recruit more freshmen?

Led by the student government, Miami launched an enrollment campaign. Undergrads put a full-court press on their old high schools, urging friends and relatives to apply. In one year the Miami undergraduate population grew by 777 students, to a high of 10,962. Finding itself with a surplus, the university cut $85 per student off tuition last year. This semester $50 more was lopped off.

Since the campaign began, Miami, once known as "Suntan U.," has been able to exercise more selectivity in its admissions. While SAT scores have dropped nationwide, those of freshmen entering Miami have gone up 40 points.

To encourage this improvement the university last month introduced a rather startling new wrinkle: dollar bonuses for academic excellence. Astonished scholars with high averages got "good grade payoff" checks ranging from $100 (for one term with a 3.8 average) to $1,000 (three years with a perfect 4.0). So much for fiscal '79-80. Alas, the university has just approved a $500 tuition hike for '80-81. Students are protesting again, too, some of them with misspelled posters.

ARAB GIFT

When word leaked out a while back that Princeton University was discussing a $5 million research grant from the University of Riyadh, the Daily Princetonian called Saudi Arabia's consulate in New York and raised a sensitive question. Would Princeton faculty members sent to the Middle East face discrimination problems? The reply, according to the student paper: "We don't issue visas to Jews."

That was just the sort of response that might have queered the deal. But last week the $5 million agreement finally went through. Under its terms, Princeton will use the money for teaching and research in the life sciences, and in return will help Riyadh develop a science center of its own. Princeton's negotiators had insisted that the agreement include the statement, "Merit will be the criterion upon which individual scholars, technical experts and students will be proposed and received." The Saudis went along.

When Princeton President William G. Bowen flew to Riyadh to sign the agreement, he took with him a Princeton Jew--Physicist Aaron Lemonick, dean of faculty--and a Princeton woman--Administrative Assistant Marcia Snowden. "In the past," said Bowen, "controversy has centered around gifts for Near Eastern studies, but the life sciences are really free of such political questions."

Princeton's precedent-setting agreement satisfied the American Jewish Committee, which has questioned the terms of other grants offered by Arabs to U.S. schools. Said the A.J.C.'s Ira Silverman: "We think the language as written is adequately protective of the interests of minorities." He added: "We will be watching to see that it is implemented."

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