Editorial pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Chemistry and the Challenge of Sustainability Matthew A. Fisher* Department of Chemistry, Saint Vincent College, Latrobe, Pennsylvania 15650-2690, United States ABSTRACT: Sustainability poses a set of unique challenges for chemistry, challenges that need to be brought into the chemistry curriculum. Doing so will provide unique opportunities to connect learning chemistry to the broad goals of education as well as provide a more fully rounded professional education for chemistry majors. The steady growth in recent years of resources for supporting the incorporation of sustainability into chemistry education makes this goal much more realistic and achievable. KEYWORDS: General Public, Curriculum, Environmental Chemistry, Public Understanding/Outreach, Applications of Chemistry, Student-Centered Learning
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dimensions of personal and social responsibility and integrative learning. Connecting the learning of chemistry to those outcomes creates opportunities for our students to see more clearly the important contributions that chemistryperhaps more so than almost any other scientific disciplinecan make answering challenges and questions that students encounter in other parts of their education. That is an opportunity to help people see the importance of chemistry that we should not overlook.
t is extremely appropriate that the International Year of Chemistry, which was celebrated throughout 2011, comes right in the middle of what the United Nations declared as the “Decade of Education for Sustainable Development”.1 An incredibly complex set of interconnected challenges, sustainability encompasses issues as diverse as water quality, climate change, renewable energy, personal and national security, food production and safety, combating diseases with new diagnostics and drugs, new materials, and more efficient chemical manufacturing. Over the past few years, I have followed discussions of the grand challenges in chemistry and have been struck by how many of these challenges are directly connected to sustainability.
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SUSTAINABILITY IN EDUCATION OF CHEMICAL PROFESSIONALS There is another dimension to the incorporation of sustainability into chemistry education. The ACS Guidelines and Evaluation Procedures for Bachelor’s Degree Programs6 states that, as part of developing student skills in ethics, “[S]tudents should conduct themselves responsibly and be aware of the role of chemistry in contemporary societal and global issues.” That awareness of chemistry’s role in contemporary issues is reflected in another ACS document that has been around for many years, The Chemical Professional’s Code of Conduct.7 Within that code of conduct are statements regarding the responsibility of chemical professionals to the public and to the environment: • Chemical professionals have a responsibility to serve the public interest and safety and to further advance the knowledge of science. • Chemical professionals should strive to understand and anticipate the environmental consequences of their work. They have a responsibility to minimize pollution and to protect the environment. These statements connect very easily to a model of professional education developed by William M. Sullivan,8 who described three apprenticeships that make up the education of any professional: • A cognitive apprenticeship where the student learns to think like a member of the profession • A skill apprenticeship where the student practices the skills routinely used by members of the profession
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SUSTAINABILITY AS A “BIG IDEA” IN EDUCATION Much of the activity related to sustainability in higher education is described by Sherman2 as falling into one of three categories: (i) a set of prescribed practices; (ii) a focus on campus operations; or (iii) a specialization that leads to the development of new academic programs. But these categories miss the mark in terms of sustainability’s importance to chemistry and chemical education; the challenge is broader than just environmental issues. Sustainability offers a context for learning chemistry that is rich in possibilities that connect with our studentstheir interests, their priorities, and the challenges they will face as they enter society as adults. Sherman eloquently argues that sustainability is a “big idea” that cuts across disciplinary boundaries. The term “big idea” comes from the work of Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe3 on backward design of courses; they described a big idea as “a concept, theme, or issue that gives meaning and connection to discrete facts and skills”. Designing courses in a way that starts with what student understanding would look like and linking that to big ideas and essential questions fits very well with what we know about how students learn and how the best teachers teach.4 But sustainability as a “big idea” offers chemistry educators more than just a context for a course. It opens up opportunities to connect chemistry to the essential learning outcomes identified by the Liberal Education and America’s Promise Project of the American Association of Colleges and Universities.5 Those learning outcomes cut across disciplinary boundaries and include intellectual and practical skills as well as © 2011 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
Published: December 12, 2011 179
dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed2007923 | J. Chem. Educ. 2012, 89, 179−180
Journal of Chemical Education
Editorial
• An apprenticeship that “teaches the skills and traits, along with the ethical comportment, social roles, and responsibilities, that mark the professional ... the novice is introduced to the meaning of an integrated practice of all dimensions of the profession, grounded in the profession’s fundamental purpose.” Sustainability, more so than any other context I can identify, has the potential to serve as an effective framework for engaging students simultaneously in more than one of these apprenticeships and thereby connecting undergraduate chemistry education to The Chemical Professional’s Code of Conduct.
(2) Sherman, D. T. Sustainability: What’s the Big Idea? Sustainability 2008, 1 (3), 188−195, DOI: 10.1089/SUS.2008.9960. (3) Wiggins, G.; McTighe, J. Understanding by Design, 2nd ed.; Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development: Alexandria, VA, 2007; p 5. (4) Bain, K. What the Best College Teachers Do; Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 2004. (5) National Leadership Council. College Learning for the New Global Century; Association of American Colleges and Universities: Washington, DC, 2007. (6) American Chemical Society Web Site for Standards, Guidelines, and ACS Approval Program. http://portal.acs.org/portal/ PublicWebSite/education/policies/index.htm (accessed Dec 2011). (7) American Chemical Society Web Site for the Chemical Professional’s Code of Conduct. http://portal.acs.org/portal/ PublicWebSite/careers/ethics/CNBP_023290 (accessed Dec 2011). (8) Sullivan, W. M. Work and Integrity: The Crisis and Promise of Professionalism in America, 2nd ed.; Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, CA, 2004. (9) Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities. http://www.sencer.net (accessed Dec 2011). (10) American Chemical Society Web Site on Chemistry and Sustainability. http://acswebcontent.acs.org/sustainability/index.html (accessed Dec 2011). (11) Sustainability in the Chemistry Curriculum, Middlecamp, C. H., Jorgensen, A. D., Eds.; ACS Symposium Series 1087; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2011. (12) American Chemical Society Committee on Environmental Improvement Activities. ACS-CEI Award for Incorporation of Sustainability into Chemistry Education. http://portal.acs.org/portal/ PublicWebSite/about/governance/committees/cei/activities/CNBP_ 024461 (accessed Dec 2011).
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RESOURCES TO MEET THE CHALLENGE While I know that many chemistry educators have desired to incorporate a global issue like sustainability into their courses, one of the great obstacles for a number of years has been a lack of resources that can easily be used. Very few chemistry teachers I have methigh school or collegehave the time to go digging through the primary literature to find examples and ideas of how sustainability could be incorporated as an intriguing question or problem to drive the learning of chemical concepts. Fortunately, more curricular resources linking chemistry to sustainability are now available. This Journal, for example, publishes environmentally focused articles and supports educators in celebrating Earth Day on April 22. Recycling is the theme of Chemists Celebrate Earth Day in 2012. National curricular reform projects like the NSF-funded Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities9 have made available information on model courses through their Web sites. ACS launched in August 2011 a sustainability gateway within the ACS Web site10 that provides a convenient way for members to explore sustainability related resources; one of the major sections of the Web site is focused on education. A forthcoming volume in the ACS Symposium series is titled Sustainability in the Chemistry Curriculum and includes a number of presentations from a multiday symposium held by the Division of Chemical Education in 2010.11 Finally, 2012 will mark the third round of recipients of an award sponsored by the ACS Committee on Environmental Improvement for incorporating sustainability into chemistry education.12 The motivation for the award was to recognize promising practices in the incorporation of sustainability into chemistry education developed by individuals or groups and worthy of broader dissemination. Recipients give a talk on the recognized work at an ACS national meeting, and links to their work are incorporated into the education section of the ACS sustainability gateway. The importance of sustainability to chemistry and chemistry education is clear, the connections are real and significant, and more resources are available now than any time before. The challenge is for each of us as chemistry educators to find ways to bring that connection and context into our courses.
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
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REFERENCES
(1) Web Site for the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, 2005−2014. http://www.desd.org/ (accessed Dec 2011). 180
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