Educator honored

The environmental science curricula improvements made by John Giesy of Michigan State University’s (MSU) Zoology Department earned him this year’s Menzie-Curie and Associates Environmental Education award. Conferred by the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC), the award recognizes “significant contributions to environmental education”. Actively involved in instructing undergraduate, masters, doctoral, and postdoc students, as well as working with visiting scientists from other countries during his 29 years of teaching at MSU and the University of Georgia, Giesy has put together materials for a wide variety of courses. An environmental issues and public policy course aimed at undergraduates, for example, challenges students to solve important environmental problems such as dealing with arsenic in drinking water, while a graduate class in chemodynamics introduces students to important models such as GENEEC and LEAD. Many of Giesy’s students have gone on to become instructors, according to the SETAC award committee. Giesy stresses that his role as an educator extends to the industrial community, noting that he worked with executives at 3M Corporation to recognize the problems associated with perfluorinated compounds, ultimately inspiring the company to remove the substances from their Scotchguard products (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2000, 34, 317A).