College &
University


Community Outreach

"Each day of the workshop has been productive - and I learned so much that I can use in my job. It gave me ideas on how to modify some of my existing experiments!"

Jeff Davis
Workshop Participant

Fellows
Program


Fellowship Program

"It's been quite a blessing to be a part of the innovation that comes from Beyond Benign ... its made quite an impact on my life and future."

Ben Stewart
Outreach Fellow

K-12
Field Trips


k-12 Outreach

"I think that what you are doing is wonderfully informative and relevant to todays world and we will definitely invite you back next year!"

Sylvia Klingzing
Teacher

Educator
Training


Educator Workshops

"The workshop was valuable because I can truly use this in conjunction with my every day curriculum. Thank you so much!"

Mary Lytle
Teacher

 

Letter From the Executive Director, Amy Cannon

2012 has started out with a bustle of activity for us here at Beyond Benign. We began the new year with a meeting on January 10th to present an exciting new program called the Green Chemistry Commitment, aimed at bringing together academia around common goals of what chemistry education should look like. This meeting was followed by a high school teacher training on January 20th that we ran at Siena College in NY, sponsored by the NY department of environmental conservation. Both events were well attended and we are looking forward to much more in 2012 in both our higher education programming, as well as our K-12 programs.

As we begin this new year, we also have a chance to take a pause and to look at the progress that has been made since our organization began, just over 4 years ago. As a field, Green Chemistry has seen tremendous strides in terms of implementation within educational systems, both at the K-12 level, as well as university. We are finding that more and more discussions are happening around how to weave these concepts of sustainability and green chemistry in to standards and frameworks at both levels, in order to provide higher implementation and further adoption, as well as provide lasting change. It seems we are at a tipping point where green chemistry will soon be the norm within educational systems, rather than the exception.

Another exciting new advancement over the past several years is the emergence of toxicology and environmental health sciences as key pieces that are lacking from the training of a chemist. This past fall John Warner and I taught a course at Simmons College for their chemistry majors on toxicology and environmental health sciences. This course built upon John's work at the University of Massachusetts (Boston and Lowell campuses) and we are working on ways to capture the curricula in a way that can be shared with other institutions looking to implement similar courses. To me, this is a very exciting time. Never before have so many academic institutions begun to implement, or are considering the implementation, of these types of courses for chemistry majors. If academic institutions can offer these courses for chemistry majors, then I believe we are on the brink of a shift in thinking and a tremendous shift in how we educate scientists. Very exciting times indeed. As an organization, Beyond Benign is responding to this shift through new programs such as the Green Chemistry Commitment, as well as looking towards new opportunities for curricula design on toxicology and environmental health sciences for chemists.

At the K-12 level, we are continuing to provide professional development courses for teachers, as well as an on-line course for high school teachers. We have been working on some new, exciting curricula funded by an EPA P2 grant that replace some of the most challenging and most hazardous labs found in high school classrooms and we hope to have these available by the summer of 2012. This continues to be a passion of ours; showing that chemistry is fun and exciting through hands-on, relevant activities, while using greener chemistry within a classroom.

Late 2011 and early 2012 has also brought additional support for our programs. American Tower is a new sponsor to Beyond Benign's K-12 programming and we are looking forward to working with the Woburn public schools with them to bring green chemistry to their area. Dow Chemical has recently provided support for the Green Chemistry Commitment program, indicating their continued support for incorporating sustainability within higher education.

With these partners and more, we are looking forward to another year filled with greener chemistry and exciting new curricula. There is still so much more work to do – and, we're looking forward to doing our part! All the best in 2012!