randomness about departments

This is more a comment on departmental politics at Reed than anything particularly related to science, but.

Today I received an email from one of my profs asking if I could go to lunch with the seminar speaker. This is the third email of the sort I've gotten this semester, and I know several people who don't get them at all. When I looked at who it was sent to, it looked basically like my prof thought "hmm, it's an organic talk, who is into organic?" "I know, Melissa, Jess, Todd, Ian, Connie, Gildevin...yes they all like organic chemistry. Okay, yeah, I guess I'll email them." In the chemistry department, it seems like it's usually a random list of who a prof thinks would be interested, or a list sent out to their 300 level class and thesis students. In the biology department, though, if you are a declared biology or bmb major, you get an email every week about what the lecture topic is going to be and asking if you want to go to lunch with the speaker. Several of my friends have asked how to get on the mailing list for chemistry talks, and the truth is there is no mailing list.

In the chemistry department, in similar fashion, someone (usually Randy, the stockroom manager, or John Witte, a staff member who is an NMR wizard) goes to Trader Joes and gets milk and cookies. The bio department caters cookies and coffee. Then at the end of the year picnic, again, chemistry just goes to Cosco and buys some burgers and then Randy pulls out a rusty old grill, whereas biology is catered.

I guess at a larger school 25 or so majors wouldn't seem like a lot, but biology is one of the larger departments at this school, whereas the chemistry department has 10 majors in my year and 7 faculty members (that isn't counting people like me, so I guess bmb majors factor in as well in both departments), one of the best faculty to student ratios at the school. Also interesting is that, because there is no particular sequential order that you are supposed to take bio classes in (other than classes that are tend to be sophomore/junior vs. junior/senior), basically sophomore year you are taking 300 levels, whereas in chem sophomore year you're just taking o-chem first semester, so you're not in upper levels yet. There are way fewer sophomores that go to chem talks than sophomores that go to bio talks (ratio wise, because fewer students go to chem talks in general), meaning that I feel often like at a personal level, the department feels smaller because you aren't really part of it until late sophomore/ junior year. It's interesting how having a relatively smaller department affects How Things Are Done.