American Chemical Society education award
Dr Glenn Hurst has been recognised with one of the 2020 American Chemical Society’s Committee on Environmental Improvement awards.
The award program seeks to recognize those individuals and organizations that have made exemplary contributions to the incorporation of sustainability into chemical education.
Professor Glenn Hurst has been recognised for his work "Systems thinking approaches to teaching green and sustainable chemistry in alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals". As part of the award, he will be expected to present invited talks on his work as part of a symposium at the Spring 2020 National Meeting to be held March 2020 in Philadelphia, USA.
In his presentation, Dr Hurst will explain how ‘systems thinking’ enables students to study the interdependence of components in dynamic systems allowing them to transition from a fragmented and reductionist knowledge of subject matter to a more integrated and lateral understanding of concepts, resulting in deeper learning.
Dr Hurst explained: “Green chemistry is well suited to a systems thinking approach as the 12 fundamental principles all depend on the reliance of reactions and processes on each other and with both local and global systems.”
This work is part of the international IUPAC project on Systems Thinking In Chemistry Education, led by Peter Mahaffy and Stephen Matlin.