Education

Greenwich Academy, an independent day school for girls, holds an Invention Convention every year for their 5th graders. Following the engineering design process, the students are required to design an invention to be judged by the community in early February. To kick-off the event, Leanne Pasquini visited the 5th grade science classes to introduce and discuss the engineering design process. The students were challenged to “think outside the circle” and learned several ways in which engineers use the design process to improve the world around us. Leanne's visit inspired the girls to add "green" or sustainable criteria into their inventions.

Learning Green is a free resource aimed at undergraduate students.  It includes video lectures, reading assignments, exercises, and quizzes.

Click here to visit the website

Center graduate students developed and taught a three-week high school curriculum broadly covering green chemistry and engineering.  Within this curriculum, some basic high school chemistry is included.  Students master chemistry concepts and Green Chemistry/Engineering principles. 

The "Pathways to Engineering" program was created as part of Environmental Engineering PhD Candidate Sarah Miller’s Graduate Leadership Fellowship through the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science. The program was open to all middle school students involved in the Yale Science Pathways Program, a new initiative actively supporting a cohort of students from New Haven in an effort to increase the number of students graduating from college with science degrees. Students were given the opportunity to visit the engineering labs at Yale University, learn about different types of engineers and participate in a fun engineering challenge.

Professor Paul Anastas’ 2000 book Designing Safer Polymers gives examples of Green Chemistry principles applied to polymer science and discusses the advantages of introducing greener polymers to the US market.  By translating the book into Chinese, the message can be delivered to a wider audience in China where much polymer R&D and manufacturing aimed at the US market is taking place.