Teaching Sustainability and Environmental Justice in Undergraduate Chemistry Courses

Abstract

This article examines the intersection of environmental justice and undergraduate chemistry education through a review of existing publications that highlight successful strategies for chemistry educators interested in incorporating environmental justice into their classrooms. It emphasizes the key roles of racial and social justice in the Environmental Justice movement and their connection to the shift toward diversity, equity, inclusion, and respect in chemistry education today. Five co-operative educational strategies are exemplified through established project-and problembased learning examples, which include class-level as well as department and community-level projects. These projects demonstrate how powerful chemical content knowledge, socio-philosophical framing, eco-reflexivity, sustainable schooling and living, and student experience and engagement can all contribute to the successful teaching of environmental justice in chemistry. On the basis of its interdisciplinary nature, incorporating environmental justice involves providing the opportunity for students to develop their social agency and holding space and respect for those who have different cultural identities and/or come from historically marginalized backgrounds. The enrichment of existing chemistry curriculum through topics of environmental justice contributes to the achievement of the overall goal to graduate responsible, ethical, and compassionate members of the community from educational institutions.

Development and Implementation of a Two-Level Inquiry- and Project-Based Modular Approach to Teaching a Second-Semester Physical Chemistry Laboratory Course

“…In the present work, the main objectives of this computational module are to challenge students to explore the functions of various modern quantum chemistry software packages and to design calculations to study electronic and optical properties of small organic molecules. Students will be introduced to the important roles that various small organic molecules have played (and continue to play) in the efforts to solve grand challenges that the world faces, such as those concerning the environment, water treatment, and energy . Furthermore, students will be required to design molecules using different functional groups or new molecules to generate Wannier excitons .…”

Leveraging Student–Faculty–Staff Partnerships to Implement Inclusive Curricular Reform in Chemistry Education

“…The initial work of the committee prioritized developing a strong foundation of support within the group by practicing transparency, mutual respect, and honesty. Building mutual trust across traditional academic hierarchies has proved to be essential for effective student–faculty–staff partnerships. − The trust within CARAC also set an important tone for both facilitated and open discussions about sensitive topics such as racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination as they are relevant in higher education. Within the committee, members began by leaving formal titles at the door and referring to one another by first names.…”

Navigating the Future of Separation Science Education: A Perspective

“…The distributed pharmaceutical analysis laboratory (DPAL) project focuses on identifying medicine quality using HPLC in samples from low and middle-income countries in collaboration with 30 academic institutions [21]. Relatedly, topics of sustainability and environmental justice [22] can be connected to the reduction of solvent use and power consumption for chromatographic analysis [23], "greener" sample preparation [24], and the use of more environmentally-friendly mobile phases [25][26][27]. Equity in separation science education should also consider the cost of instrumentation, as this can be a barrier to hands-on learning in locations without access to large instrument budgets.…”