Robert Iafe

Minority Serving Institute (MSI) Green Chemistry Education Award Winner

2023-2024

California State University, San Marcos

Award Lead: Robert Iafe

Proposal: The Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry will be establishing a new Green Chemistry minor starting September 2025. To achieve this goal, two courses will be developed: a Green Chemistry course, and a Toxicology course, using open-access curricular resources from Beyond Benign. Specific student learning objectives and course content will be adapted to suit a majority Hispanic/Latinx student population in collaboration with the LatinX Center on campus. In collaboration with Institutional Planning and Analysis and other campus partners, qualitative and quantitative data will be collected from all chemistry and biochemistry majors, and assessed to evaluate student success, persistence, and self-efficacy in the university. Finally, California State University, San Marcos will host a public university-wide seminar on green chemistry. The goal of the seminar is to increase retention of students in chemistry research by exposing them to cutting edge green chemistry research.

3M Green Chemistry Education Student Group Challenge Award Winner
2022-2023
Institution: California State University, San Marcos
Faculty Advisor: Robert Iafe 
Project Plan:  The CSUSM ACS Student Chapter will organize a Green Chemistry Summit event to introduce green chemistry to the campus and local community colleges, featuring Dr. John Warner as a keynote speaker. The group will also provide a tour of Genomatica (a green chemistry award winning biotech company based in San Diego) to showcase a local industry example of green chemistry research applications. The group’s final project includes running a green chemistry outreach activity to a local high school, where a green chemistry experiment to create a solar cell will be used to discuss alternative energy, emissions prevention, and redox chemistry.