This paper examines what has happened over a period of 25 years since a separate Division of Chemical Education was created within the Department of Chemistry at Purdue University. It argues that the faith in the chemical education graduate program that was demonstrated when the division was created was well-placed, and that chemical education has been shown to be a legitimate area of scholarly inquiry. The chemical education program provides a useful model for other discipline-specific, content-based education research programs such as the School of Engineering Education at Purdue, which recently experienced its fifth anniversary.