The community of educators teaching green chemistry in classrooms and laboratories across the United States and globally has grown significantly over the past few decades. However, their efforts to reform chemistry education and include more green and sustainable chemistry concepts have been generally siloed and championed by individual faculty instructors and teachers via grassroots efforts. This article provides a brief history of the green chemistry education movement, highlighting a selection of efforts and approaches taken by individuals and institutions to drive educational change and further integrate green chemistry into education systems worldwide. An analysis is then provided of survey results of ACS members collected in 2020 exploring the importance of green chemistry principles and concepts in education, how prepared faculty feel to teach said concepts, what barriers exist to teaching these concepts, and what mechanisms they felt would best help them overcome said barriers. The connection to communities of practice (CoPs) and communities of transformation (CoTs) as well-documented mechanisms for supporting curricular change and reform in STEM education are then discussed in the context of the green chemistry education community. Finally, we describe the work of community leaders to develop a philosophy statement around green chemistry education, providing a foundational statement of motivation for educators, and discuss the development and launch of the new Green Chemistry Teaching and Learning Community (GCTLC) online platform as a tool to support this growing global community.

Green chemistry provides unique opportunities for student engagement through K-12 and community outreach. As a platform for safe, engaging outreach, green chemistry activities allow for hands-on approaches to introducing science and chemistry concepts in informal settings. Green chemistry outreach also is a means for American Chemical Society (ACS) student chapters to earn recognition as a green chemistry student chapter through the ACS student chapter awards. Beyond Benign's College Student Fellows program is highlighted as an example of training college students in green chemistry outreach to promote K-12 and college student engagement. The University of New England (UNE) and Colby College provide examples of college student engagement through different outreach settings. This article outlines the many benefits of utilizing green chemistry activities through K-12 and community outreach, including creating a safe environment for student engagement, creating habits-of-mind for college students, and engaging K-12 students in safer, greener chemistry experiments and activities.

Although principles and practices of green and sustainable chemistry have been articulated for more than 20 years, they have yet to become systemically infused into the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. The American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute (ACS GCI) has convened stakeholders from across the chemistry education community to develop a strategy and, subsequently, a road map for mainstreaming green and sustainable chemistry concepts and practices into the chemistry curriculum. Through this initiative, a set of core competencies were developed to guide infusion of green and sustainable chemistry knowledge and skills into the curriculum and prepare chemists to make significant contributions to sustainability in the future. The core competencies are described briefly here as well as strategic efforts to develop the road map and to aid the adoption of green and sustainable chemistry into the undergraduate chemistry curriculum.

The American Chemical Society (ACS), Division of Chemical Education, Examinations Institute, has been developing content maps to describe comprehensively the undergraduate curriculum aligned to traditional subdisciplines. These content maps have been developed through the combined efforts of many faculty members who teach the targeted courses in the subdiscipline. A recent collaboration between the Examinations Institute and the ACS Green Chemistry Institute has resulted in the consideration of green chemistry content in the context of the content maps. The inclusion of green chemistry concepts in the context of organic chemistry has been the initial focus of the work of this collaboration. Through working with faculty who teach green chemistry courses or organic chemistry courses with the theme of green chemistry, the organic chemistry content map has been revised and reconceptualized with the theme of green chemistry included. The process, excerpts of the content map, and alignments of traditional organic chemistry exam items to both the organic chemistry content map and the organic chemistry content map with the inclusion of green chemistry are reported.

Within recent history, both science research and science education have been largely reductionist in perspective. While the reductionist approach has resulted in a significant increase in our knowledge of the natural world and in great technological advances, it is not sufficient for addressing global world challenges, such as sustainability, pollution, climate change, and poverty. We, as members of the Systems Thinking in Chemistry Education (STICE) project, argue that for science in general, and chemistry in specific, to continue to advance and for citizens to be prepared to participate knowledgeably and democratically in science-related policy decisions, the reductionist approaches that are commonly used in chemistry research and chemistry education must be complemented with a more holistic approach. Systems thinking is such an approach. This article discusses the historical development, describes the key characteristics, and presents some skills and competencies associated with systems thinking. Our intention is to provide chemical educators with enough basic information about systems thinking that they can consider why and how such an approach might be applied in the education of both future chemists and future global citizens.

Chemistry educators have a responsibility to teach students about the essential role the field of chemistry has in a sustainable future for the planet. Chemical products, such as pharmaceuticals, plastics, electronics, agrochemicals, and building materials, all benefit society yet unintended consequences resulting from the production and use of these products compel chemists to develop new technologies which minimize their harm. The Committee on Professional Training (CPT)'s recently adopted Supplement on "Green Chemistry in the Curriculum" promotes the inclusion of green chemistry in the undergraduate curriculum. The design of safer technologies is enabled by a systems thinking approach, which analyzes the life cycle of every component of a chemical process. The skills utilized by systems thinking in green chemistry have the potential to foresee and avoid unintended consequences of new chemical products. In this article we illustrate how the inclusion of green chemistry in general and organic chemistry courses connects structure and reactivity to a chemical's impact on the environment and human health. For example, applying green chemistry principles and systems thinking concepts to safety instruction not only teaches students to assess risk for performing a reaction but also extends to sustainability considerations such as feedstocks and waste produced. The study of the life cycle of chemicals connects green metrics and system thinking tools to recognize environmental and societal impacts. Though green chemistry curriculum materials are increasingly available, there is a need for educators to develop and assess systems thinking models for the classroom and laboratory. Overall, students equipped with the knowledge and ability to apply green and sustainable principles and the ability to make connections through systems thinking will be prepared to contribute to solving today's sustainability challenges.

The primary activities of chemistry involve analysing, synthesizing and transforming matter, yet insufficient attention has been paid to the implications of those activities for human and environmental well-being. Since a core element of addressing sustainability challenges requires attention to the material basis of society, a new paradigm for the practice of chemistry is needed. Chemistry education, especially gateway post-secondary general chemistry courses, should be guided by an understanding of the molecular basis of sustainability. A Systems Thinking in Chemistry Education framework illustrates one way to integrate knowledge about the molecular world with the sustainability of Earth and societal systems.

BACKGROUND:In mammals, calories ingested in excess of those used are stored primarily as fat in adipose tissue; consistent ingestion of excess calories requires an enlargement of the adipose tissue mass. Thus, a dysfunction in adipose tissue growth may be a key factor in insulin resistance due to imbalanced fat storage and disrupted insulin action. Adipose tissue growth requires the recruitment and then the development of adipose precursor cells, but little is known about these processes in vivo.METHODOLOGY:In this study, adipose cell-size probability distributions were measured in two Zucker fa/fa rats over a period of 151 and 163 days, from four weeks of age, using micro-biopsies to obtain subcutaneous (inguinal) fat tissue from the animals. These longitudinal probability distributions were analyzed to assess the probability of periodic phenomena.CONCLUSIONS:Adipose tissue growth in this strain of rat exhibits a striking temporal periodicity of approximately days. A simple model is proposed for the periodicity, with PPAR signaling driven by a deficit in lipid uptake capacity leading to the periodic recruitment of new adipocytes. This model predicts that the observed period will be diet-dependent.

BACKGROUND:Adipose tissue grows by two mechanisms: hyperplasia (cell number increase) and hypertrophy (cell size increase). Thiazolidinediones are insulin-sensitizing peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma agonists that are known to affect the morphology of adipose tissue.METHODOLOGY:In this study, adipose cell-size probability distributions were measured in six Zucker fa/fa rats over a period of 24 days, from four weeks of age, using micro-biopsies to obtain subcutaneous (inguinal) fat tissue from the animals. Three of the rats were gavaged daily with rosiglitazone, a thiazolidinedione, and three served as controls. These longitudinal probability distributions were analyzed to obtain the rate of increase in cell-size diameter in rosiglitazone-treated animals, and the hyperplasia induced by treatment quantitatively.CONCLUSIONS:We found that treatment leads to hypertrophy that leads to an approximately linear rate of cell diameter increase (2 m/day), and that the hyperplasia evident in treated animals occurs largely within the first eight days of treatment. The availability of additional lipid storage due to treatment may alleviate lipotoxicity and thereby promote insulin sensitivity. The hypothesis that a TZD regimen involving repeated treatments of limited duration may suffice for improvements in insulin sensitivity merits further investigation.