Green Chemistry Resources in the Classroom and Laboratory: Part 1

Faculty development is a powerful lever for advancing the adoption and sustained implementation of green chemistry in undergraduate education.This presentation describes the design, implementation, and emerging outcomes of Green Chemistry Faculty Mentoring Networks (FMNs) developed through a national collaboration between the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and the ACS Green Chemistry Institute (ACS-GCI).
Current FMN cohorts focus on adapting and implementing curricular materials developed through the ACS-GCI module project, drawing on BioQUEST’s decades of experience designing, facilitating, and sustaining Faculty Mentoring Networks that support collaborative curricular innovation and STEM education reform across diverse institutional contexts. Together, this partnership integrates high-quality disciplinary resources with a proven network-based model for faculty learning, implementation support, and community building.
This presentation examines key design principles, facilitator development structures, and early evidence of pedagogical and curricular change emerging from ongoing FMN cohorts. Particular attention is given to how structured peer collaboration, sustained facilitation, and networked community support enable scalability and durability beyond individual grant cycles.
Faculty Mentoring Networks function not simply as professional development programs but as national infrastructure for translating green chemistry resources into sustained teaching practice, institutional momentum, and scalable STEM education reform. Implications for cross-institutional scaling, facilitator pathways, and the future of green chemistry education within an evolving funding landscape will be discussed.

To support and accelerate the adoption of green chemistry content in undergraduate programs across the United States, especially given recent changes and requirements outlined in the ACS guidelines for bachelor’s degree programs, we report on the recent launch of the Green Chemistry Professional Mentoring Networks (PMNs) program. This five-year, $1.8m NSF-funded project started in the fall of 2025 and will continue into the 2029/2030 academic year, supporting up to 160 faculty and educational practitioners through participation in small, thematically-focused mentoring groups that take place over the fall and winter semesters each year. Each participant will benefit from peer-to-peer mentorship, access to green chemistry experts and professional development time, a stipend to support their work, travel support to attend an in-person summit, and access to a pool of funds for curriculum development. This presentation will provide a basic overview of the program, the research framework established to understand behaviour change and adaptation and implementation practices, and initial work and outcomes of the program to date.

As regional public Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs) navigate an evolving research landscape, integration into regional innovation ecosystems has become vital. Through the NSF EPIIC program, The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) and the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire (UW-Eau Claire) have formed a strategic cohort to build institutional capacity for high-impact external partnerships. Our efforts focus on leveraging substantial investments in talent and facilities specifically within the chemical sciences, high-performance computing, and sustainability sectors to serve as catalysts for campus-wide innovation. We describe how our institutions utilize the EPIIC framework to bridge the gap between academic research and external industry needs. These initiatives position the PUI as a critical research and development asset while creating experiential learning opportunities that better prepare students for the rapidly changing workforce. We detail the methodologies used to identify and map regional partners, the lessons learned from our cross-institutional collaboration, and the strategies used to incentivize faculty engagement. Furthermore, we discuss how the TCNJ/UW-Eau Claire cohort model provided a feedback loop that accelerated internal capacity building and how we are branding our research capabilities to be viewed as true partners by corporate collaborators. Ultimately, our efforts to align academic research and curricular goals with industry needs are now driving innovation across disciplines on both campuses.

Sustainable change in teaching laboratories is accelerated when organizations collaborate to provide educators with practical resources and support. This presentation highlights how Vernier Science Education, Beyond Benign, and the Lab Safety Institute are working together to develop green chemistry experiments, professional development opportunities, and safety resources. Participants will be introduced to the tools, communities, and training already available through these collaborations and will learn how to access and engage with them. By connecting educators directly with these resources, the session demonstrates how partnerships can expand the reach of green chemistry and help instructors more easily implement sustainable practices in their own classrooms.

For global and widespread adoption of green chemistry instruction across diverse social, environmental and economic contexts, a holistic systems-based approach is required where the connectivity between (often, discrete) educational units is critical for success. This contribution will outline existing examples of effective international partnerships for green chemistry education where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This intentional and synergistic combination of complementary system components has the potential to deliver instruction that is more effective, accessible, and, ultimately, facilitates the promotion and integration of (green chemistry) education on a greater scale. Perspectives on how existing collaborative activity can be enhanced together with new proposed partnership models, will be presented.

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is rapidly being considered a transformative green engineering technology, enabling non-invasive, community-level monitoring of biological and chemical stressors. However, without the ability to interpret complex bio-signals, communities cannot effectively advocate for or participate in evidence-based pollution prevention and health resilience strategies. This study introduces a novel pedagogical approach designed to democratize access to technical environmental data through generative artificial intelligence and gamification. We conducted a pilot study (N=94) to evaluate the framework’s intervention, which utilized custom-built digital modules guiding users through wastewater signal analysis and climate scenario modeling as seen in Figure 1. Quantitative analysis revealed that AI scaffolding acts as a critical equalizer in green science education, as noted in Figure 2. As evidenced by our technical proficiency data, while participants showed variable competence in data interpretation of Module 3 (Mod 3), the integration of AI tools in Module 4 (Mod 4) resulted in a consolidation of high proficiency, with 61.7% of participants achieving an assessment score of 5 out of 5. This indicates that AI support can effectively bridge the knowledge gap, allowing audiences to engage with sophisticated green engineering concepts. Furthermore, 88.3% of participants rated the AI assistant as useful. The feedback distribution highlighted that “Great Visuals” (25.2%) and “Interactive Engagement” (23.4%) were the primary drivers of satisfaction, suggesting that user-centric design is essential for effective communication in green chemistry.

The fast adoption of large language models has introduced new possibilities and challenges in scientific writing. While artificial intelligence (AI) tools have supported researchers through grammar correction, reference handling, and text organization, recent generative models such as ChatGPT are now presented as capable of producing complete sections of academic text that resemble conventional manuscripts. This situation raises questions related to authorship, responsibility, and the integrity of scientific communication. In this work, we examine how AI-generated and AI-assisted text is currently used, for instance, in green analytical chemistry writing, with emphasis on recurring linguistic, structural, and bibliographic patterns that signal automated drafting in journal submissions. In this context, this work aims at analyzing and reflecting on risks identified in the associated article, including fabricated references, confirmation of user premises driven by prompt formulation, superficial text expansion, and productivity-driven publication practices that conflict with the principles of green analytical chemistry. AI-assisted writing is framed as an educational matter linked to systems-thinking, human supervision, and accountability in scientific communication. When appropriate, a set of practical indicators and good-practice principles is presented to guide transparent and supervised use of AI in writing, with attention to authorship, content verification, disclosure, and awareness of the socio-environmental costs associated with AI-supported communication.

One of many key differences between curricula for students studying chemistry vs. chemical engineering is that the latter includes systems thinking as a foundational, essential cognitive framework. The clear need for professional engineers to have a systems mindset requires that engineering students be trained accordingly. The need for a systems mindset across the spectrum of professional chemists seems to be less clear and as a result, chemistry students rarely if ever encounter systems thinking as taught with the intention to inform their understanding of fundamental concepts and skills. Consequently, chemists who become instructors typically lack the expertise to teach through a systems thinking lens (because they themselves were not trained to do so). Therefore, despite the well-proven utility of a systems thinking approach to learning, we have a long way to go toward broad inclusion of this higher-level cognitive approach in the chemistry classroom.

In collaboration with the IUPAC project “Systems Thinking in Chemistry for Sustainability: Toward 2030 and Beyond” (STCS 2030+) we have been assessing perceived barriers for instructors who want to take a systems thinking approach in their chemistry classes so we can develop guidance to support them in overcoming them. At the ACS Green Chemistry Institute, we are working toward a similar goal and have developed several free resources, including a comprehensive learning module for instructors and a new asynchronous introductory course that introduces many of the basic systems thinking concepts. In this talk, I will discuss our perception of barriers to systems thinking inclusion with a focus on how they impact instructors. I will also emphasize the urgent need for professional development opportunities that will enable chemistry instructors to more comfortably leverage systems thinking as a powerful teaching tool.