5Overarching Curricula and Implementation Ideas

PROMOTING GREEN CHEMISTRY AND GREEN ENGINEERING

The marketing of green chemistry and green engineering education efforts within an organization and to the public are critical for the growth of the fields. Linda Vanasupa, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, is not so sure that if green chemistry is incorporated into the curricula students will automatically be drawn to the idea; the human dimension must be considered. Green educators are excited about new curricula but also need to balance that with the issue of what students want. The educators have to overcome the perception that green chemistry and engineering are niche topics rather than state-of-the-art science and therefore can attract and retain the best and brightest students.

Several of the attendees expressed ideas of how to improve marketing of green education. Steve Howdle from the University of Nottingham explained that the reason for the low enrollment rate for the undergraduate green program may be as simple as where the green chemistry and engineering programs are placed in the course catalog. His explanation is based on data from the universities of Oxford and Sheffield where enrollment is 20-30 students a year and the green courses are listed in chemistry and chemical engineering curricula instead of being listed under a separate green curriculum in the course catalog. Howdle also thought that even differences in language, such as “octylamine” versus “octyl amine,” between the United Kingdom and the United States create hurdles for the green community because they create cultural differences.

Vanasupa shared Cal Poly’s materials engineering undergraduate program marketing experiment with the workshop participants. One part of the marketing experiment was changing the e-mail announcement about the program from an “Extreme Action” theme to a more subtle theme: trees with music. A second part of the marketing experiment was redesigning the Web pages with more photographs depicting a diverse array of people (see Figure 5.1). Motivations for the changes were to have students practice reflection and to create an image that the field embraces diversity.¹ Cal Poly also wants to understand the issues driving humanistic students.

The number of U.S. citizens versus international students in graduate science and engineering programs is another issue. Despite a 15-year investment in science and engineering education, there is a decreasing trend in the number of engineering and chemistry degrees. For example, in 2000 approximately 5,000 Ph.D. degrees in the physical sciences were granted in the United States compared with approximately 25,000 Ph.D. degrees granted in China.²

Communication through advertising, teaching, and educational materials are also seen as useful to get the message out and market green chemistry. The many American Chemical Society (ACS) publications Kathryn Parent presented are one avenue. Both the ACS’s Journal of Chemical Education and The CPT (Committee on Professional Training) news letter, which Fleming Crim spotlighted, are excellent forums. In addition to historical media outlets external to a school, such as radio and newspaper, working with a school’s radio station or journalism school, are other broadcasting avenues for all levels of education. In addition, collaborations on energy initiatives that are springing up on many campuses and in many industries (not just the petrochemical industry) are also opportunities for communication between groups who do not routinely communicate with one another, such as civil engineers and energy economists.

ADDITIONAL GREEN CURRICULAR IDEAS

Several ideas for curricular development not mentioned in existing green material or in the process of development were noted. Both David Shonnard from Michigan Technological University and Stanley Manahan from the University of Missouri brought up the idea of industrial ecology or the science of sustainability. According to Shonnard, industrial ecology is an interdisciplinary framework for designing and operating industrial systems as living systems interdependent with natural systems. Therefore, there is a balance between environmental and economic performance with local and global ecological constraints. Industrial ecology comprises several tools and systems, such as Life Cycle Assessments (LCA), according to David Allen from the University of Texas-Austin. A standard definition of an LCA is an objective process to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with a product, process, or activity by identifying energy, materials, and wastes in order to evaluate and implement opportunities to affect environmental improvements. Material and energy flow analyses (e.g., mass balancing) for a variety of scales, such as an individual business, industrial sector, or an entire economy, that are measuring environmental performance are part of LCAs.

Legislative issues in occupational and public health seem to be beyond what is considered standard for life-cycle assessments and completely unrelated to green chemistry and engineering; however, there are important connections that should be noted. Mike Wilson from University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health cited the issue of work-related exposures in the United States, in California in particular, as examples of green occupational health issues. Work related hazardous exposures represent 60,000 deaths in the United States every year, 7,000 in California alone, and is therefore a major public health issue. Specific examples of green-chemistry-related occupational and public health legislative issues include (1) the phaseout of perchloroethylene and other chlorinated solvents from vehicle repair; hexane was substituted for perchlorethylene in California and across the United States with deleterious effects; and (2) bromopropane has been introduced as a substitute for chlorofluorcarbons. Julie Zimmerman from the Environmental Protection Agency and the University of Virginia added that environmental and human health impacts are typically viewed as an outcome from LCA rather than an integrated part of life-cycle management. Therefore it is important to introduce engineers and chemists, most of whom probably do not know what lethal dose 50³ is, to environmental health and biomedical topics such as toxicity, toxicology, and epidemiology.

A second curriculum topic that Eric Beckman from the University of Pittsburgh proposed is chemical product design with sustainability being the design goal. Product design classes are common in other types of engineering, such as mechanical and electrical, but have eluded chemical engineers. Of the 6.5 billion people on the planet, most do not know or have any background in chemical product design. A product design class would be a multidisciplinary subject, so ideally there would be chemists and business students in addition to chemical engineers taking the class. In addition, teaching the design philosophy that green products are almost as cheap and almost as good is not good enough. The products need to be cheaper, reliable, and green.

In the area of curriculum, access to information and resources is seen as one of the biggest challenges, which goes back to the topic of marketing. According to Howdle, Parent, and Haack, one simple issue is just getting people in touch with the resources. Jorge Vanegas from Texas A&M University, formerly of Georgia Institute of Technology, stressed that creating common classes for chemistry, chemical engineering, and other students within the standard engineering and chemistry curricula is a solution versus teaching in a silo, single-channel fashion. Crim from the University of Wisconsin sees more materials being freely available, as well as custom publishing, so that the cost of materials and books decreases because custom publishing could create iTunes™ like databases of laborator experiments. People will be able to selectively purchase only the experiments they want.

RESEARCH EXTENSIVE UNIVERSITIES

Although there are signs that research extensive universities (R1s) are becoming more involved with green education in direct and indirect ways, the lack of presence and support of R1 universities for green chemistry and green engineering education was a theme brought up several times during the workshop. Parent sees R1 involvement as low. Richard Wool from the University of Delaware sees R1s 10 years behind in green education. Howdle strongly articulated that R1s are conflicted between having the traditional R1 attitude of research powerhouses, and still wanting to install more fume hoods to work with even more hazardous materials versus the integration of greenness that would dilute the skills of the graduate students and postdocs. Kenneth Doxsee from the University of Oregon believes that since R1s are major feeders for industrial employers and next generations of faculty, they have a responsibility to embrace green principles. Doxsee thought that the presence of faculty from MIT, Cornell, and Wisconsin at this Chemical Science Roundtable workshop was a sign that R1s are seeing value in green education.

There was both agreement and disagreement that the trickle-down theory of green research done by faculty, postdocs, and graduate students influences the undergraduate curriculum in a positive way. Three examples of the many intellectual opportunities green research gives researchers, according to Crim, are Tyler McQuade (Cornell University) researching telescoping of reactions, Barry Trost (Stanford University) emphasizing atom economy, and Shannon Stall (University of Wisconsin) focusing on inorganic catalysis. Crim explained that translating this research into education critical because just “cherry picking” reactions that can be made to look very green can turn out to be very distant from what people are doing in R1 universities. The Grignard reaction is a good example of this. The Grignard reaction is still traditionally taught in chemistry classes, but metal-catalyzed coupling reactions, not Grignards, are more commonly used in the laboratory. Crim suggests that the problem is how effective the R1 faculty members are in translating the green research into teaching, with some professors being more effective than others. In addition, Crim believes that the R1 universities could use the green textbooks and material that undergraduate colleges use to prevent “reinventing the wheel” and ease the overload burden.

BUSINESS EDUCATION

A common theme throughout the workshop was incorporating green ideas into business education. According to Warner, training people just to work for corporations is not enough anymore, and an emphasis on entrepreneurship is needed. Two examples of business education activities are Pat Hogan’s business club at Suffolk University and Tyler McQuade’s efforts to develop relationships between Cornell’s chemistry department and its business school. The fact that green business efforts for undergraduate, graduate, and faculty are in motion is evidence that many see it as important. Parent sees one of the issues of selling green education to business people is making it clear how they will gain from using green principles. Parent notes, however, that it is the scientists and engineers pushing the efforts, not the business community and it is therefore currently a one-sided push.

GREEN ETHICS

Green ethics, or the social responsibility to improve the environment, was another curriculum item that came up in discussion several times. In addition to many of the attendees who deem green ethics important, it is also information the students want. Vanasupa said that many students are very attracted to the idea of “making a difference” and “service to humanity.” According to Vanasupa, ethics have been a peripheral subject in many schools and having the material as an integral part of the curriculum is a goal with a variety of solutions available.

Cliff Davidson from Carnegie Mellon University posed the question of “who will teach the ethics?” Davidson suggested that expert ethicists and humanities professors were seen as appropriate people to teach as well as help develop the curriculum. Vanasupa explained that because faculty members are often already burdened with a full workload, one solution has been to outsource to the experts. At the same time, she said that the outsourcing can also create a disconnect between the faculty and material covered. One solution to the disconnect is coteaching, although there can initially be problems with the administration and infrastructure.

CONCLUSION

By the close of the two days, the attendees of this Chemical Sciences Roundtable workshop had covered a wide array of green chemistry and green engineering education efforts and ideas for all levels of education. The existing and developing efforts at the pre-college, undergraduate, graduate, faculty, and industry levels discussed cover many formats:

• Workshops;
• Videos;
• Computer programs;
• Research programs;
• Degree programs;
• Booklets;
• Textbooks;
• Competitions;
• Websites;
• Databases; and
• Distance education.

Developing curricular ideas around the issues of marketing, occupational health, business education, R1s, and green ethics are also seen as important for the future of green chemistry and green engineering education. The workshop served as a forum to organize a core of leaders who hope to further facilitate, catalyze, and integrate green chemistry, engineering, and policy into historical curricula.

Comparing the ideas about green chemistry and engineering education that participants identified in the preworkshop survey with what the attendees were able to discuss and rally around indicates consistency of trends. In the pre-workshop survey the majority of the respondents (76 percent) felt an integrated approach for teaching the material was more effective than teaching separately. A similar idea, presented in the overarching marketing section, came out repeatedly during the two-day workshop. In the area of impediments to incorporation, the respondents did not identify one factor as dominant. Instead books, lecture materials, colleague resistance or lack of awareness, and a crowded curriculum were each about equally important (about 20 percent each). The lack of materials and crowded curriculum, as well as the lack of awareness of materials, mentioned in the overarching section mirrored the survey results. Prior to the workshop, the attendees indicated that green education was best targeted at all undergraduate levels (67 percent), as well as at the freshmen level (17 percent). The presentation of so many efforts at all levels of education during the workshop indicates that there is an interest for some kind of education at all levels. In addition, the particular breakout group, Green Chemistry and Engineering in Future Curricula, felt that a specific degree program is best targeted at the graduate level since undergraduates are trained to be generalists. During the workshop the attendees’ discussion of the benefits of green education agreed with the survey’s findings: (1) enthusiasm (35 percent); (2) recruitment and retention (23 percent); and (3) increased job opportunities (18 percent). Overall, the attendees also agreed with the survey that green teaching aids the teaching of historical curricula (100 percent) and acts as a multidisciplinary tool (94 percent). In addition, the workshop discussion identified savings in laboratory equipment, chemicals, and supplies as huge benefits. Although the survey clearly indicated that the attendees felt that a lack of funding (91 percent) was an issue and during the workshop funding was occasionally mentioned, the workshop focused on the many content, growth, and implementation ideas.

Footnotes

1

http://mate​.calpoly.edu/quest.

2

National Science Board. 2002. Science and Engineering Indicators 2002. Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation.

3

Lethal dose 50 (LD50) is the dose at which 50 percent of an exposed animal population dies.