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By David A. Laviska, Portfolio Manager for Green Chemistry and Sustainability in Education, ACS Green Chemistry Institute, and Michael Wentzel, Professor of Chemistry, Augsburg University
To confront complex challenges like climate change, growing demand for clean energy, persistence of chemicals in the environment, and plastics pollution, we need a generation of students trained to think about problems in a holistic and critical way. One way to change reductive mindsets that many students bring to higher education is to reference real-world applications and broader systems-based connections of fundamental chemistry concepts. 2024 ACS GCI Rising Star in Green Chemistry Education Awardee Professor Michael Wentzel aims to broaden students’ perspectives in this way through a transformative and immersive study-abroad experience for undergraduate students, "Science and Religion in Germany."
Over the past quarter century, inclusion of the foundational principles of Green and Sustainable Chemistry in higher education has been slowly proliferating. Part of the motivation for this “reimagining” of the ways we prepare students for STEM careers comes from acknowledging the many sustainability challenges we face as a global community. We cannot confront complex challenges like climate change, growing demand for clean energy, persistence of chemicals in the environment, and plastics pollution without training students how to think about the concepts they learn from a systems thinking perspective. Where do chemical building blocks come from? Where does chemical waste end up? Which elements are abundant, and which are in limited supply? How do the answers to these questions (and many more) impact discovery and innovation, manufacturing, regulatory policy, human and environmental health, economics, national/international politics, etc.?
One way to change reductive mindsets that many students bring to higher education is to reference real-world applications and broader systems-based connections of fundamental chemistry concepts. As one example, the combination of hydrogen with nitrogen to form ammonia is an example of a deceptively “simple” chemical reaction that is commonly used to introduce first-year chemistry students to a broad spectrum of topics (e.g., stoichiometry, ideal gases, equilibrium, etc.):
Yet textbooks rarely delve into discussions of the Haber-Bosch process in which the reaction shown above is leveraged to produce ammonia at industrial scale. Haber-Bosch ammonia is a feedstock for large-scale commercial fertilizer production leading to both positive (helping feed the global population of over 8 billion people) and negative (critical imbalance of nitrogen in the biosphere) impacts. Taking this paradox as a starting point, 2024 ACS GCI Rising Star in Green Chemistry Education Awardee Professor Michael Wentzel has worked with colleagues at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, Minnesota to develop and implement a transformative study-abroad experience for undergraduate students.
Augsburg’s study abroad course, "Science and Religion in Germany," takes place in Germany where students visit many of the physical locations where the Haber-Bosch process was developed and optimized in the early 20th century. In addition to Wentzel, the course is co-taught by Dr. Hans Wiersma; together, they facilitate student learning built around significant developments in science and religion with particular focus on ways those developments shaped history and the world we live in today. With this systems-based approach, students engage in an immersive, multi-disciplinary learning experience that includes pre- and post-tour assignments and compulsory daily blog posts that capture student impressions, reflections, and learning outcomes.
This unique program ran successfully in 2017 and 2023, and this year, students will experience an added component: David A. Laviska (ACS GCI) will join for part of the program to network with the students and provide 2-3 class sessions on the relevance of green chemistry and systems thinking to the broader science landscape and students’ future careers. In addition to sharing information about ACS resources and opportunities for students, Laviska will invite Augsburg students to think about how they can share their own knowledge of green and sustainable chemistry with students at other higher education institutions. The GCI has set two relevant long-term goals: 1. Encourage “outside the classroom” activities for students that highlight the principles and value of green and sustainable chemistry, and 2. Facilitate inter-institutional student peer-to-peer mentoring that involves students (or student groups such as ACS Student Chapters) teaching or mentoring other students on everything from formation of student communities to outreach initiatives to study abroad programs and beyond.
Several highlights of this new collaboration between the ACS GCI and Augsburg’s study abroad program are shown below. Please contact David Laviska (ACS GCI) and/or Michael Wentzel (Augsburg) with any questions or for more information.
Green & Sustainable Chemistry Highlights:
Carl Bosch Museum: Focuses on chemical technology development, including the industrial-scale production of ammonia via the Haber-Bosch process.
Philipps Universität Marburg: Dr. Eric Meggers will give a talk on his research in catalysis and sustainable chemistry.
Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen: Dr. Nicole Graulich and her research group host a green and sustainable lab experiment followed by poster presentations about their work in chemical education research.
Systems Thinking Highlights:
Justus von Liebig Museum: Focuses on chemistry education and pedagogy, in particular Liebig’s “law of the minimum” for sustainable agriculture. Liebig also developed the Kalliapparat which is the glassware on the ACS logo!
Atomkellermuseum: Examines nuclear research and its historical, ethical, and technological impacts at the site where Heisenberg and other German scientists worked.
I. G. Farben & Wollheim Memorial Tour: Explores the complex interplay of industry, international conflict, and ethics in chemistry and materials science.
Buchenwald Memorial Visit: The Buchenwald concentration camp memorial is a reminder of the people that endured the atrocities that took place there.