Contributed by Kendra Leahy Denlinger, Teaching Professor at Xavier University; Rebecca Haley, Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin-River Falls; and Heather Hopgood, Assistant Professor of Instruction at Ohio University

Working together to connect chemistry

What do women’s health and health inequity have to do with the ability to identify a stereogenic center? This was a question we set out to answer as we began our journey with the Green & Sustainable Chemistry Education Module Development Project. Before diving into how we have attempted to answer this question, let’s go back to a scenario you may have encountered in the classroom.  Every now and then, chemistry educators get the bold student who speaks on behalf of the class: “Why does this matter?” with the accompanying sigh and eye-roll. In the past, we have answered this question with some broader picture context and the obvious “you’ll need it for your next course.” This answer isn’t all that satisfying for us, or the students.

Contributed by Jonathon Moir, Ph.D., Program Manager, Green Chemistry Teaching and Learning Community (GCTLC), Beyond Benign

As the 2021/2022 school year begins and many students have returned to in-person classes across the U.S., effective strategies for teaching and learning in the midst of an ongoing global pandemic remain top of mind amongst educators at all levels, from K-12 through to higher education. A priority remains the ability to network and collaborate with other educators (especially when in-person conferences and meetings remain uncertain), to share best practices and resources, to help support each other amid change, and to find ways to stay engaged across geographic and institutional boundaries.

By Aurora Ginzburg, Ph.D., Education Program Specialist, ACS Green Chemistry Institute; and Jennifer MacKellar, Program Manager, ACS Green Chemistry Institute

In 2015 and 2020, the ACS GCI surveyed ACS members in higher education to evaluate the status of

By David A. Laviska, Assistant Professor at Seton Hall University and Sarah Prescott, Associate Professor at the University of New Hampshire, Manchester

It’s not uncommon for academics working in the sciences to feel a sense of isolation (no, this isn’t a reference to the COVID pandemic that has forced an extra measure of isolation on all of us). Depending on individual research interest(s) and prior training, it’s likely that most chemists feel some sense of “working in a vacuum”. How many of us are lucky enough to have close working colleagues who have expertise similar to our own? In most traditional academic settings, each scientist occupies a unique niche and this intellectual siloing can hinder the sharing of ideas and collaborative innovation, both in the research laboratory and in teaching. The latter can be especially challenging since major changes in the classroom (for gateway courses in particular!) tend to be much more broadly “visible” to all the stakeholders in higher education (students, fellow faculty, and administration).

As spring arrives in the Northern Hemisphere and the vaccine rollout continues, there is much to be hopeful for in the year to come. This spring, it seems the seedlings of change in chemistry education, planted by many over the years, are also beginning to emerge. Here in the ACS Green Chemistry Institute (GCI), our vision of influencing the way students learn chemistry in the undergraduate gateway courses (general and organic chemistry) is taking shape.  Starting in January, we began working with 36 educators from across the U.S. and Canada to develop green and sustainable chemistry (GSC) modules for these courses. Seeing these modules take shape is inspiring and exciting!

By Aurora Ginzburg, Ph.D., Chemistry Education Program Specialist, ACS Green Chemistry Institute

I recently read the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine consensus report, How People Learn II (HPL2), and was struck by the many potential opportunities for education in green and sustainable chemistry to address the report’s findings on improving learning outcomes. Some of these opportunities are summarized below.

Dr. Jonathon Moir, Program Manager, GCTLC, Beyond Benign

My name is Dr. Jonathon Moir and I am thrilled to be writing to you today as the new Program Manager for the Green Chemistry Teaching and Learning Community (GCTLC). The GCTLC—an online platform set to launch in 2023—is a joint initiative announced in December by the ACS Green Chemistry Institute and Beyond Benign that will help revolutionize the way green chemistry educational resources are shared and further catalyze collaboration, networking and mentorship among educators, students, industry stakeholders and community members.

This January, a group of motivated educators from across the U.S. and Canada began the process of creating education modules to integrate green and sustainable chemistry (GSC) into general and organic chemistry topics. The effort is part of the ACS GCI Educational Module Development Project—a three-year project aimed at providing the resources and training for undergraduate educators to accelerate the adoption of GSC in the classroom. Fifteen teams have been formed to work on 31+ modules covering topics like equilibrium, electrochemistry, chirality, and synthetic design from a green chemistry and systems thinking perspective. We checked in with one team—Prof. Marta Guron of Villanova University and Prof. Lihua Wang of Kettering University—to hear their vision for and experience with the project thus far.

By Gabriela Gastelu, Ph.D. student at the National University of Córdoba, Argentina, and 2021 Heh-Won Chang Fellow in Green Chemistry

I remember the first time I entered a laboratory as a secondary school student in my home city in Argentina. Its equipment was quite basic; however, I was delighted with all the glass material and the idea of making new things just by mixing components. Yes, I know my idea of a chemist at that time was really simple! But that simple idea inspired me to decide to study chemistry at the university.

By Jenny MacKellar, Program Manager, ACS Green Chemistry Institute

As we move into our ninth month of social distancing and mask wearing, we look with hope towards the promise of emerging vaccines. We give thanks to the incredible work of teams of scientis

Hey, undergrads! Looking for some green chemistry activities for your ACS Student Chapter? Great news, we’ve got boatloads full of great activities that can even be done virtually. In particular, the green chemistry activities from past ACS Program-in-a-B

By Jenny MacKellar, Program Manager, ACS Green Chemistry Institute, and Aurora Ginzburg, Education Specialist, ACS Green Chemistry Institute

Are you passionate about sustainability? Do you teach a foundational lower-division chemistry course? Are you looki

By David Constable, Ph.D., Scientific Director, ACS Green Chemistry Institute

Say you’re in the market for a new article of clothing and you start searching on the internet for what’s available from retailers you have bought from in the past.  Maybe you wa

If you missed any of the fantastic chemistry education sessions at the ACS Green Chemistry Institute’s® 24^th Annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Virtual Conference, it’s not too late to go back and review those sessions now.  Several of the technical ses

Edward Brush, Ph.D.

Bridgewater State University

ebrush@bridgew.edu

The world presents us with problems whose complexity and impact we can barely imagine but that we must solve. As educators, our mission is to prepare our students to do exactly that. The in

Due to COVID-19, the Chemists Celebrate Earth Week (CCEW) campaign has gone fully digital with instructions for organizing virtual events and an updated suite of educational resources.

Find a Virtual CCEW Event to participate or learn how to plan your own

By Jenny MacKellar, Program Manager, ACS Green Chemistry Institute ®

In the last couple of Nexus newsletters, we have shared information about ACS GCI’s efforts to draw connections between Systems Thinking and Chemistry Education, as well as our efforts to

Although chemistry occurs in systems in nature, most students still learn chemistry in a reductionist manner—looking at the discrete parts without a clear idea how it connects to the whole. Now chemistry educators are starting to integrate the concept of

By Jenny MacKellar, Program Manager, ACS Green Chemistry Institute

Here at ACS GCI, ensuring that the next generation of chemists is educated with a green chemistry perspective is one of our strategic priorities. Over the years, ACS GCI has developed and l

By Christiana Briddell, Sr. Communications Manager, ACS GCI; Jennifer MacKellar, Program Manager, ACS GCI; Marta Gmurczyk, Safety Portfolio Manager, ACS

Today’s environmental headlines are replete with sustainability topics from climate change to plastics

Each year ACS Student Chapters incorporate green chemistry outreach and activities into their programming in order to receive the Green Chemistry Award. The Green Chemistry Student Chapter Award, created eighteen years ago through a collaboration between

By Michelle Muzzio, Graduate Student, Brown University

I never realized how much location could profoundly change an experience until I was walking to class about to learn more about green chemistry from some of the world’s leading experts on the topic, wa

The American Chemical Society's Green Chemistry Institute (ACS GCI) was honored to partner with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to host the 2019 Green Chemistry Challenge Awards ceremony and reception at the EPA headquarters in Washington D.C. th

Contributed by: Radhika Gupta and Gunjan Arora, Members of ACS International Student Chapter, University of Delhi, India

The ACS International Student Chapter at the University of Delhi in India has been actively involved in organizing several national and

Contributed by Derrick Ward, Program Manager, Beyond Benign, and Erika Daley, My Green Lab

Are you looking to integrate green chemistry into teaching labs, but just can’t find time to look for and analyze new experiments? Are you a TA that would like to su

Contributed by Jennifer MacKellar, Program Manager, ACS Green Chemistry Institute

Over the years, there have been many efforts to provide green chemistry resources and support for chemistry educators. We are pleased to announce another outstanding resource

Contributed by Karolina Mellor, Ph.D., Program Manager, Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale University

Yale Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering recently developed an educational computer game which introduces the concepts

Applied Separations is a small business based in Allentown, Pennsylvania that has supported greener approaches to chemistry for years. The company manufactures supercritical fluid systems, offers DNA-free laboratory sample preparation consumables and a ne

Contributed by Abigail Giarrosso, Research Assistant at the Toxics Use Reduction Institute

As a sophomore chemistry major at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell (UMass Lowell), it was my time to take the chemistry major-specific organic laboratory cour

The 2017 Ciba Award in Green Chemistry was awarded to four outstanding students from the Simmons College, University of California - Berkeley, University of Massachusetts, Boston, and Grosse Pointe North High School. These students have shown significant