Project Overview

Based on the premise that graduate chemistry education is traditionally highly disciplinary and often disconnected from society's critical challenges, this project takes a multi-faceted approach to incorporate various perspectives into doctoral chemistry curriculum, encompassing a new team-taught course that involves SEEG dimensions, a new green chemistry elective course, and an overhaul of requirements for the doctoral qualifying research proposal and dissertation research to include substantial SEEG components. 

Increased consideration of, and appreciation for, institutional contexts, policy processes, and innovation opportunities enables students to position themselves to use their chemical knowledge more effectively for change in service of societal needs, particularly with respect to sustainability and the circular economy.

This project will challenge the traditional, disciplinary-focused, pedagogical paradigm through piloting a more holistic approach to education and professional development that is purposefully aligned with the heavily integrated and interdependent world in which we live. Success in this exploratory study could lay the foundations for expansion to disciplines and institutions beyond the pilot base.

About the NSF GERMINATION Program

The NSF Directorate for Engineering GERMINATION program aims to foster the development of pedagogical frameworks, platforms and/or environments to enable participants to formulate research questions and ideas with potentially transformative outcomes. The extraordinary response of the STEM research community to the COVID-19 pandemic, exemplified by the record-breaking speed of novel vaccine development, highlights the outstanding capabilities at all levels of the research enterprise. The GERMINATION program seeks to harness the immense capacities of academic researchers to similarly address other critical global challenges through supporting the development of new pedagogical approaches that train researchers to formulate and develop key research questions.

Supported by the National Science Foundation EAGER GERMINATION: Chemistry Graduate Education - Sustainability and the Circular Economy grant (EFMA-2203704).