Chemistry in the 21<sup>st</sup> century is faced with a variety of new challenges, such as sustainability and data science, that have enormous implications for how chemistry is practiced as well as how the next generation of chemists are educated. These challenges won’t be met by simply “stuffing more” into an undergraduate curriculum that is already overcrowded and suffering from an approach that has often been described as “a mile wide and an inch deep.” The challenges that sustainability and data science present chemistry education require that we re-think how the undergraduate curriculum and courses are designed and take a new perspective on the various components. We need to look at the mental models that we use for undergraduate chemistry education. As Peter Senge describes them, mental models “are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action.” This talk will use some different models for science and becoming a scientist – including Harwood’s activity model and Sullivan’s three apprenticeships of professional education – to explore how sustainability and data science could be integrated with undergraduate chemistry education to meet the new challenges of the 21<sup>st</sup> century.

Leveraging different perspectives to integrate chemistry education, sustainability, and data science

ACS Spring 2022

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