Incorporating Global Climate Change, Green Chemistry, and Sustainability Themes into the First-Year Chemistry Curriculum

Abstract

Global climate change is the greatest challenge of our time, with many communities across the globe already experiencing some of its deleterious consequences. Chemistry educators have the responsibility to prepare their students to face this challenge so that students, as future scientists, engineers, and leaders, could find solutions for it. Green chemistry and sustainability are useful tools in this effort. Educating students about these tools will better equip them to find solutions to climate change and will demonstrate that chemists are committed to a sustainable planet for future generations. This article advocates for integrating climate change, green chemistry, and sustainability themes into the First-Year Chemistry (FYC) curriculum. Doing so would expose a larger cohort of students from a broad spectrum of majors to these critical issues, maximizing the overall impact and benefits. The author’s efforts to present climate change, green chemistry, and sustainability themes in FYC lectures, laboratory experiments, workshops, and seminars are detailed in this article. These efforts often demonstrated real-world applications of chemistry that engaged students’ interest and did not compromise chemistry content or laboratory techniques students are expected to learn in FYC. They are relatively easy to implement in any FYC chemistry classroom, once concept, one experiment at a time, without requiring specialized equipment. Resources for such implementation and the learning outcomes are also presented in the article. In a broader context, incorporating climate change, green chemistry, and sustainability themes into FYC aligned with the concept of “systems thinking” in chemistry education. It also provided opportunities for “spaced practice” as an effective tool for students to review chemistry concepts throughout the year, promoting long-term retention. The rewards for the instructor were high, offering professional growth and the satisfaction of making a meaningful impact on future generations. Warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are dire, stating that inaction to mitigate climate change could threaten the existence of all inhabitants of our planet. Therefore, the effectiveness of a chemistry education could be measured by how well educators prepare students to face and overcome climate change, the greatest challenge of our time.