Session: General Posters:

As articulated through the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), today’s societal challenges are immense. To make a significant impact in addressing a range of sustainability challenges, we must rethink how we teach and learn chemistry. As molecular designers, chemists have tremendous power to utilize green chemistry concepts to create sustainable molecular building blocks for use across industry sectors. Green Chemistry puts chemists in the central role of inventors who intentionally design chemical products that have reduced human and environmental hazards. This role is perhaps the most essential role in creating a sustainable society comprised of sustainable products and processes due to the central role of chemistry in our society. However, the training ground for chemists, colleges and universities, often exclude Green Chemistry education, missing a significant opportunity to train the incoming workforce to design and invent sustainable solutions to global problems.

Through the Green Chemistry Commitment (GCC), Beyond Benign fosters a community of practice in higher education. Through the GCC, these universities are united around a shared vision to expand the community of green chemists at their institutions, grow departmental resources, improve connections to industry and job opportunities in Green Chemistry and collaborate to affect systemic and lasting change in chemistry education. The program is dedicated to integrating Green Chemistry and toxicology concepts into chemistry courses and programs with the goal of providing students with the skills to design chemical products and processes that have reduced human and environmental hazards. The flexible framework allows all to participate in ways that best fit the local needs of the institution. This poster will discuss how to adapt the GCC framework to a wide range of colleges. It is a goal of this presentation to broaden participation in the GCC to ensure 25% of all students graduating with a chemistry degree have a background in Green Chemistry by 2025.

Amy Cannon

Appearances