Summary
In this article, it is described how systems thinking and the idea of leverage points guided curriculum development and fueled adoption of green chemistry within the undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory at the University of Oregon (UO).
Curricular change within the chemistry curriculum is often difficult and slow, partly because there are numerous specific barriers to implementation. However, a larger issue is that the curriculum, and the institutions that it is connected with, are complex systems. In the implementation of a new green chemistry curriculum for the organic teaching laboratory, a systems-thinking approach was employed to develop and disseminate the new curriculum. The interconnected elements of the system include students, instructors, staff, chemicals, lab facilities and equipment, the faculty, the department, the institution, external colleagues, graduate schools and employers, and donors or other external stakeholders, depending upon the boundaries that are placed on the system. A concept map that examines the interconnectedness among the elements of the organic teaching laboratory with and without the incorporation of green chemistry is illustrated within the article.
Moreover, five key leverage points where targeted efforts could yield significant gains in the design and implementation of the curriculum are discussed i.e. feedback loops, information flows, self-organization, goals and paradigms. By harnessing positive-feedback loops, ensuring free information flow, empowering faculty to modify and create, communicating clear goals regarding the purpose of the curriculum, and articulating an aspirational paradigm, one can increase the rates of adoption and establish a community that can contribute to the future success of such effort.
Two key strategies that emerged from these efforts were the importance of expanding system boundaries to garner support for those efforts and building capacity of faculty to participate in curricular change. Expanding the boundaries, more people (other instructors and students, colleagues, and administrators), facilities, and external stakeholders are involved. Although expanded boundaries can lead to greater complexity, they almost always bring with them more resources and potential supporters. There are more opportunities to establish reinforcing feedback loops and to increase information flows. Faculty faced a number of barriers to adopting the new curriculum, including insufficient knowledge about green chemistry, a lack of time to evaluate and select new experiments, and institutional resistance to change. To help faculty overcome these barriers, a week-long Green Chemistry in Education Workshop was run each summer from 2001 to 2017. The primary aim of the workshop was to support successful adoption of the curriculum at the participants’ home institutions. Systems thinking was a key to the design of the workshop and was integrated as a topic in the workshop curriculum.
In conclusion, the products of this long effort, including more than 20 new laboratory exercises; a textbook, “Greener Organic Chemistry: Strategies, Tools and Laboratory Experiments”; a searchable database, “Greener Educational Materials (GEMs) for Chemists”; and a series of week-long workshops, “Green Chemistry in Education Workshops”, influenced hundreds of faculty and hundreds of thousands of students.
Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
This article deals with system thinking and green chemistry and it describes approaches to reimagine Higher Education. The revamp of the traditional Organic chemistry course of the University of Oregon to a “greener” one was based on system thinking approach. The architectures of this shift consider the organic chemistry teaching lab as a system. Strengthening the interconnections between the elements of that system - such as students, instructors, staff, chemicals, lab facilities and equipment, the faculty, the department, etc- and expanding the boundaries seemed to be beneficial in terms of creating conditions that are favorable for curricular change.
