ES&T EDITORIAL
Environmental Education
T
he role of environmental education at colleges and universities continues to be a hot topic on campuses, reminiscent of the years following the first Earth Day more than two decades ago. At that time many schools developed courses for the general population of undergraduates that were a response both to the social conditions of the day and the emerging interest in environmentalism. Some of the texts developed for these courses were offensive to some academics, as they seemed to be as much ideology as chemistry, as much sensationalism as serious policy analysis. Most of these texts lie unused today. Some schools created a curriculum in "environmental studies," and this term came to be differentiated from "environmental sciences," which a few schools developed. The latter included more natural and physical science, and the former more economics and social sciences. Some colleges and universities still offer these programs, though many have been disestablished. In the 1990s there seems to be a renaissance of interest in environmental programs at the undergraduate level, but this time they seem to be more academically rigorous. Some schools have integrated environmental material into the curriculum; others have decided that the subject merits a School of the Environment, or the equivalent. Such schools seem to be more feasible if other schools existed previously whose mission could be expanded to include more environmental content. This was true at Duke and Michigan universities, for example, where schools of forestry and natural resources were renamed to include the term "environment." Other institutions have developed what some call the Tufts model, where the guiding principle seems to be to integrate environmental content throughout the university. At Tufts and many other schools there is a concerted effort to encourage faculty in business schools, science departments, and other parts of the university to reexamine their course content and to use environmental examples and case studies to illustrate the principles they are teaching. In fact, a combination of these models is possible, and no university is likely to concentrate all of its environmental offerings in one school. Rather, 0013-936X/94/0927-249A$04.50/0© 1994 American Chemical Society
schools of environment are more likely to serve as the focal point for environmental education and research on a campus, drawing resources to the institution because of their high visibility and concentration of talent. For chemistry professors the integration of environmental applications into course work should not prove difficult—indeed, many have done so for years. For example, instructors of organic might consider inserting a comparison of the waste products generated by two different synthetic sequences to reach the same product in order to show how one sequence might be preferable, at least in that respect. A physical chemistry professor might choose to illustrate photochemical principles or chemical kinetics with examples drawn from atmospheric chemistry. The purpose of all of this, of course, is to sensitize the chemists of the future that environmental concerns will be a part of their professional future no matter where they go. More specialized courses in environmental courses will be needed. This is particularly true since the American Chemical Society has authorized undergraduate certification in environmental chemistry that requires upper level course work. This means designing new courses that include environmental applications of chemistry (for example] at the upper class level, building on fundamental courses in inorganic, organic, and physical chemistry. A few universities already have such courses in place, but few have a sequence that could serve as a "minor" or concentration area. Such sequences need to be carefully constructed to maintain appropriate rigor and to cover the natural and industrial chemistry that make up the science of environmental chemistry. It is a legitimate field of scholarship and it needs to be done well.
Environ. Sci. Technol., Vol. 28, No. 6, 1994
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