The next generation of scientists face an ever changing landscape of ethical and equity issues. Despite this, we have found that the direct incorporation of social justice themes in chemistry curricula remains rare. We report our continuing work on incorporating social justice into the second semester of organic chemistry at Reed College. We will describe an independent project in which students were asked to investigate equity issues surrounding organic molecules that are important in current events. This work invited students to research the chemicals not just as isolated species but as parts of complex, interconnected systems. By directly including social justice issues we hoped to improve the inclusiveness of our classroom by explicitly discussing equity impacts on minoritized groups.

Social justice & the chemistry curriculum: improving inclusivity by directly addressing equity impacts of chemicals on minoritized groups

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.