Chemical Education Today
Association Reports: ACS
Sustainability Education and the ACS Committee on Environmental Improvement by Laura E. Pence
The Committee on Environmental Improvement (CEI) is one of the governance committees of the ACS; its members are jointly appointed by the Board of Directors and the ACS Council. CEI is charged with raising awareness and promoting active concern both within the Society and in the general public to protect and improve the quality of human health and the environment. As part of this charge, CEI advises other ACS bodies on environmental issues in science and public policy and develops policy statements relative to legislative action by the federal government, particularly in areas of sustainability, green chemistry, and energy. The 2006 ACS policy statement on Sustainability of the Chemical Enterprise is available online and will be updated for 2009 (1). Educational Activities Of particular interest to chemical educators is the CEI’s subcommittee on education, which focuses on promoting education on environmental issues in secondary schools, colleges, universities, and for the general public. The Division of Chemical Education does not have an official liaison to CEI, but since I have been serving as a Councilor to the Division and have been appointed as an associate on CEI, I have been providing communication in an unofficial capacity. Fume Hoods The education subcommittee has several projects going at the moment. The first addresses the energy consumption of fume hoods, which tends to result in chemistry facilities being the most energy intensive spaces of any academic institution. Reducing the energy consumption of fume hoods corresponds to lower costs and less emission of the greenhouse gas, CO2. The information is drawn from projects carried out at MIT and Princeton measuring the energy use of hoods, how hood usage affects those energy costs, and several possible retrofitting strategies. Of the two common types of hoods, the variable volume hoods may be adjusted to reduce the energy cost; no similar adaptation is available for constant volume hoods. The result of this information gathering will be a letter sent to the chairs of all chemistry departments within the next year with suggestions on how to reduce the energy and cost associated with fume hoods. A different strategy is planned to convey the same information to high school teachers. [An announcement will appear in JCE when this information has been sent.] Educational Materials Incorporating Sustainability Issues The members of the education subcommittee believe that it would be irresponsible for chemistry professors to allow students to graduate without exposing them to issues of sustainability in their classes. As such, we are involved in two projects to assist 1608
with incorporating these issues into textbooks. In the first project, we have created a list of issues in sustainability and are identifying how they tie into the topics normally covered in general chemistry. This list will be supplied to publishers and textbook authors with the recommendation that these examples be used as part of the main text of the books instead of including them as the special interest text boxes that are often skipped over. In the second project, we are providing support to the writing team that is working on the next edition of the ACS text, Chemistry in Context, one of the most popular books adopted for non-science major courses. This text, which has always been on the leading edge of introducing environmental issues, will have sustainability as a theme throughout the next edition. Members of the CEI education subcommittee are providing feedback on a current draft to ensure that this new design is effective. At the ACS meeting in Philadelphia in August 2008, Katie Hunt, Immediate Past President of the Society, visited CEI in response to the committee’s concern that the ACS strategic plan did not prominently mention environmental sustainability. Hunt told us that the Board had heard our concerns and requested that CEI produce a list of three to five high priority issues for ACS to address. These should be issues that would allow the Society to be identified as a leader in sustainability, with one of the priorities focusing on education. In its response, CEI will recommend that ACS could become a leader by coordinating existing resources for sustainability education for P–20 education (from pre-school to graduate school). Send Us Your Ideas If readers have recommendations or requests for projects to be considered by the education subcommittee of CEI, they are invited to contact Matt Fisher, chair of the subcommittee, at
[email protected]. Literature Cited 1. Sustainability of the Chemical Enterprise may be found on the ACS Web site at http://www.acs.org by following the path > Policy > Public Policies > Promote Science & Environmental Stewardship > Sustainability of the Chemical Enterprise (accessed Sep 2008).
Supporting JCE Online Material
http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/Issues/2008/Dec/abs1608.html Abstract and keywords Full text (PDF) with links to cited URLs
Laura E. Pence is a member of the Department of Chemistry, University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT 06117; LPence@ hartford.edu.
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 85 No. 12 December 2008 • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • © Division of Chemical Education
