Bringing State-of-the-Art, Applied, Novel, Green Chemistry to the Classroom by Employing the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards

The Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge (PGCC) Awards Program was initiated in 1995 by the Clinton administration. These awards offer a method of recognizing companies (or other institutions) or individuals for developing and demonstrating technologies or processes "that promote pollution prevention and industrial ecology through a new EPA Design for the Environment partnership with the chemical industry". In our environmental chemistry course at the University of Scranton, students select one of the winning entries from the most recent PGCC Awards competition and present a poster on the entry. This exercise exposes these students to state-of-the-art, applied, novel, green chemistry that they would be unlikely to encounter in any other course.