Preparing Students for Careers in Sustainable Polymeric Materials with an Advanced Polymer Lab Course

The University of Southern California (USC) has recently developed a course in “Properties and Sustainability of Polymers” to enrich the minds of the student body to prepare them to solve the plastics pollution crisis. The course, CHEM462L, was designed to educate students on polymers, how they came to be, how we determine their use in daily life, their effects on the environment, and new directions toward sustainable solutions. From the course, students gain a background in the history and current use of major commercial plastics covering sorting categories #1–7 and begin to think critically about what makes certain plastics so useful for a given application. Beyond learning about industrially produced polymers, students perform in-depth analyses and characterization of various polymers. The course guides students briefly through the process of polymer synthesis followed by unique access to a number of advanced polymer characterization instruments which they use to understand desirable commercial polymer properties as well as the very polymers they made. Later parts of the course begin to dissect ways in which we as individuals can implement more sustainable choices in everyday life and how to address plastic pollution on a governmental and systemic level. In this paper, we describe the development, design, logistics and scheduling of the course and provide initial thoughts and plans for improvement and widespread adoption.