If you missed any of the fantastic chemistry education sessions at the ACS Green Chemistry Institute’s® 24th Annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Virtual Conference, it’s not too late to go back and review those sessions now. Several of the technical sessions focused on integrating green chemistry, systems thinking and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) into the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. Registration and content from this year’s meeting will be available for viewing through September 25, 2020 If you haven’t registered yet, you may do so here.
Educational Resource Development
Now that the 2020 GC&E Conference is behind us, ACS GCI continues to focus on the educational resource development project advancing the adoption of green chemistry principles and practices into the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. This three-year initiative is seeking to develop modules for undergraduate general and organic chemistry courses.
To guide the development and evaluation of the modules, we have been developing two foundational documents: a content evaluation rubric and a guiding principles document. The rubric is largely based on the work by the geosciences community to create a variety of modules that educators may use to raise geosciences literacy.
The ACS GCI rubric will be used to guide developers of the education modules to ensure quality and content are in line with the goals and intent of this project. The same rubric will be used to evaluate the completed modules. The guiding principles document outlines our thoughts on the green chemistry core competencies (look for our upcoming publication on the core competencies in the ACS Journal of Chemical Education), systems thinking approaches and chemistry connections to the UN SDGs. This document is meant to serve as a reference point for module developers who may not be completely familiar with these ideas.
Community of Practice
In collaboration with Beyond Benign, we are also exploring the potential development of an online Community of Practice for chemistry educators interested in integrating green chemistry into their courses. To better understand the need for a community of practice, we are currently asking chemistry educators to please complete the survey and tell us about your chemistry curriculum. The survey will be open until July 10, 2020.
If you are interested in learning more about our educational initiatives, we will be hosting a webinar in the near future where we’ll be discussing the education resource development project in greater detail. We’ll also be recruiting module development teams in the early fall, so keep an eye out for the application.
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