Earth's resources are limited, and in order for mankind to survive, future generations must be left with enough resources to sustain basic living necessities. To educate youth about the green chemisty concepts surrounding this issue, and to attract them to STEM fields, student volunteers at See Your Future (SYF) have developed new experiments and demonstrations for K-12 chemistry classes.SYF is a student-founded and student-run nonprofit organization with approximately 50 volunteers including undergradutes, graduate students, postdocs, lecturers, and faculty in chemisty. SYF works with the Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry and the Department of Energy to develop novel sustainability-based demonstrations and labs. SYF volunteers perform these demonstrations and labs alongside science curriculum in the Bay area schools through in-class and afterschool visits. Figure 1: SYF Volunteers at Piedmont Middle SchoolSYF has conducted surveys about techniques of curriculum and demonstrations that connect best to youth from 6th to 9th grade and has discovered two things. First, comparisn of salaries in the chemical sciences versus other professions is an effective attention-grabber. Second, cost is a major barrier for teachers in the Oakland Unified School District to provide demonstrations in chemistry classrooms.

Sustainable-chemistry based outreach to Bay Area schools

244th National Meeting (2012)

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