Dow funds UC Berkeley for advanced sustainable chemistry education

Richard A Mathies, Dean, UC Berkeley College of Chemistry.

MIDLAND, US: The UC Berkeley College of Chemistry will rebuild the college’s aging undergraduate teaching labs and design a new curriculum based on the principles of sustainability and green chemistry with the support of $3.5 million gift from Dow Chemical Company Foundation. Sustainable chemistry uses the principles of green chemistry in the design of products and processes which reduce or eliminate the use or generation of hazardous substances while addressing environmental impact.

To implement this new vision, funds from the Dow will transform the curriculum in three ways- first; the teaching labs will be renovated to reduce the impact of their use through sustainable practices. Second, the lab curriculum will be completely revised to incorporate sustainability into every experiment. The curriculum will be based on independent teaching modules that will engage the students by having them choose their experimental topics. Third, a chemical analysis instrumentation facility will be built to give thousands of students in the introductory courses the opportunity to work with modern instrumentation.

“These funds will enable us to completely renew our undergraduate instructional laboratories and our curriculum with a sharp focus on sustainable green chemical practices. The impact of this gift is huge because these courses serve thousands of students every year. The impact of our new sustainability curriculum will be amplified as our students take jobs in academia and begin to teach their own courses. Meanwhile our students in government and industry will spread sustainable practices as their careers develop,” said Richard A Mathies, Dean, UC Berkeley College of Chemistry.

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