.png "ACSGCI"){kind=logo}
By David A. Laviska, Portfolio Manager for Green Chemistry and Sustainability in Education, American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute
Except for 2020 (the year of the pandemic), the ACS GCI Green and Sustainable Chemistry Summer School program has been held annually since its inception in 2003. The long list of illustrious summer school alumni includes hundreds of highly accomplished chemists and engineers, and the cumulative impact of their shared commitment to a more sustainable future can be seen across the global chemistry enterprise. As we work to continually improve the ACS GCI program, global collaboration is a high priority. This includes promoting and supporting other green chemistry training programs, including both longstanding and emerging initiatives that show evidence of quality content and value to their respective communities.
In 2024, a new, six-day Green Chemistry training program “GreenChemAfrica” was created and launched by Professor Youssef Habibi at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) in Benguerir, Morocco. Dr. Habibi is Chair of the Sustainable Materials program and is a member of the American Chemical Society (ACS), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and a Fellow of the International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM). As a postdoctoral scholar in the U.S., he was accepted for the ACS GCI Summer School program in 2009, and his experience at our program was so impactful that he set the goal to start a similar program for the benefit of students from across Africa.
Upon joining UM6P only a few years ago, Dr. Habibi worked quickly to create and schedule the first iteration of GreenChemAfrica in 2024. The program has start-up support from Moroccan and international organizations but is still in its infancy. Since the ACS GCI Green and Sustainable Chemistry Summer School serves students from across the American continents, GreenChemAfrica addresses the vital need for providing a similar opportunity for African students. Collaboration between our programs is a logical step toward ensuring opportunities for students across the globe, and Dr. Habibi has expressed his desire to share best practices and learn from the long, 20+ year history of the GCI Summer School.
The first GreenChemAfrica program was, by all accounts, a significant success. Several faculty colleagues (and GCI collaborators) participated as instructors in 2024 and shared their descriptions/opinions with us. In summary, excepting a few programmatic challenges (to be expected with a new initiative of this magnitude), their accounts were strongly positive and included recommendations for ACS GCI support of the program and its students.
Consequently, I accepted Dr. Habibi’s invitation to join the faculty in 2025 to share my own expertise with attendees and experience the program firsthand. The agenda was spread across six full days (a significant achievement for an initiative only in its second year). Fifteen faculty conducted 32 lectures and interactive learning sessions during which the 48 students got to know each other and learned to work together, share ideas, and collaborate on shared outcomes (presented on the last day).
On the opening day, I gave an introductory lecture about broad sustainability issues, ACS resources, and mentoring. Then, on the third day of the program, I led a 3-hour workshop on greening laboratories, sustainability, and systems thinking skills, and additional ACS resources. Including faculty and students, participating in the program allowed me to connect with chemists from Canada, France, Italy, Germany, China, India, Morocco, Cameroon, Tanzania, Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal, Niger, Gambia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
While there is a critical need for resources, training, and mentoring of students and chemistry professionals across the African continent (especially true with respect to green and sustainable chemistry), the ACS GCI currently has limited ability to intersect with these important and underserved communities. Most relevant to student training, we do not accept applications from students at institutions in Africa for our Summer School, so the creation of a new, high-quality program in Africa is very welcome. Judging from the feedback of student participants, they are extremely eager to learn and absorb the concepts/skills that were presented during GreenChemAfrica. They are also highly enthusiastic about ACS and want to explore opportunities for future collaboration and involvement with us, including membership in ACS and creation of new communities/local chapters.
Gratitude and praise are due to Dr. Habibi, who has worked so diligently to multiply the impact of our ACS GCI Summer School by providing similar, high-quality training for African scholars. As a symbol of our ongoing collaboration, Dr. Habibi is joining the faculty for the 2025 GCI Summer School, and we will continue to explore mechanisms for mutual support and superior training for attendees in both of our programs.