The sum of the undergraduate lab experience is a multi-faceted, active learning process that covers the fundamentals of experimental design, data collection, and error analysis. A more passive lesson that is communicated throughout a student’s education is that of lab safety. Chemistry instructors encourage students to constantly ask the active why and how behind chemical processes, but often use a passive because approach for lab safety. Students are taught to wear goggles because it protects their eyes and use appropriate waste containers because it protects the environment, but lab texts generally fall short of using an active learning model to provide context for why we have these safety requirements and how they came to be. The purpose of this project was to teach organic chemistry lab students the importance of lab safety with regard to waste disposal and PPE, to identify lab safety as an aspect of ethical research practices, and to recognize that intentionally ignoring safe lab practices is a type of ethical misconduct that can have serious consequences in human and environmental health. A one-time interactive lecture was used to cover topics such as historical case studies of toxic waste exposures, the response by the American government to key events, and current case studies of environmental pollution. To assess the effectiveness of this lecture on long-term retention, students took a pre-lecture questionnaire to assess background knowledge followed by a post-lecture questionnaire one month later. The data collection for this project included on-ground as well as remote learning modalities.

Using environmental disasters to engage organic chemistry students in conversations about lab safety and research ethics

ACS Fall 2021

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