SABBATICAL LEAVE DR. ANU GANGULY

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1 SABBATICAL LEAVE DR. ANU GANGULY PARAGRAPH DESCRIBING THE SABBATICAL PROJECT This sabbatical was successful in changing the entire Organic Chemistry laboratory curriculum to green (or greener). The new curriculum was entered in Curricunet and approved. Green labs for greening the General Chemistry curriculum were also provided. A total of 35 Organic chemistry labs and 23 Green Chemistry were incorporated in the green curriculum. The project was worked upon with close guidance from UC Berkeley s Green Institute. A student intern from UC Berkeley was used for this project. The curriculum was in keeping with articulation agreements. Most of the labs are solvent less and reduced our toxic solvent purchase, exposure and disposal. Many of them were microwave assisted, so were energy efficient. In some cases chemical amounts were reduced so less exposure to chemicals was achieved. In other cases current labs were modified and substitution was made to use benign chemicals rather than use the ones originally listed. This reduces huge amounts of toxic waste disposal both in terms of money and resources. In addition to the curriculum, new insights were also obtained in the design of the new green Science Center at Ohlone College. If all labs are successfully implemented in the academic year then we would become the nations first green community college to have taught an entire green curriculum almost completely. This information along with our lab listings should be disseminated in a national conference such as the 2015 National ACS (American Chemical Society) meeting to educate the academic community about Ohlone s new green curriculum that we have successfully conducted, presented and articulated. SABBATICAL REPORT The sabbatical was requested for a greening and rewriting the entire organic chemistry curriculum. In addition the General chemistry curriculum was also revisited to accommodate as many green changes as possible. In the first part of the report please find my timelines and the project details. The end of this report lists the new green labs incorporated. Enclosed : 1. Organic Chemistry, A green lab compilation, Anu Ganguly and Ninad Bhat, Ohlone College publication. 2. General Chemistry, A green lab compilation, Anu Ganguly and Ninad Bhat, Ohlone College publication. 3. Organic Laboratory, A Greener Approach Anu Ganguly and Ninad Bhat, Cengage Learning publication

2 SEPTEMBER TO EARLY NOVEMBER National and local search on Green Institutes. A research was done on all colleges or universities in the nation that housed a green curriculum. It turned out that no college or university could boast of a completely green Organic or General chemistry curriculum. University of Oregon came close in some aspects of organic chemistry but only had about 10 labs that were semi-green many of which did not articulate with our program. The Green Science and Technology department at east Los Angeles College was contacted too. However, their curriculum was far different from what our articulation required. That left us with UC Berkeley s Green institute which seems to be a major center of green chemistry in the area. Curriculum defining and articulation agreements. UCB s chemistry department was contacted and in-person discussions were done with Professor Michelle Douskey ( teaches General Chemistry and one of the leaders of the Green curriculum at UCB). in addition talks were held with Organic Chemistry professors at UCB and a clear idea was obtained on what an acceptable curriculum would look like that would be easily articulated with the local UC s and CSU s. Articulation of Organic Chemistry as a transferable course is traditionally a very difficult process and it has been observed in the past that if UC Berkeley articulates the course then other CSU s and UC s follow suit. In addition there is a recent trend of community colleges dropping Organic Chemistry from their listings due to articulation and other problems. Thus it was important to know exactly how far we could go with the green curriculum and what types of labs had to be absolutely included in the curriculum for smooth transfer of the Ohlone Organic chemistry course. Choosing the right undergraduate student from UC Berekely to intern for this sabbatical project. After some interviewing, I decided to work with Ninad Bhat, an academically stellar pre-med student from UC Berkeley for my project. The advantage was that Ninad was a student of Michelle Douskey at UCB and had done all the green labs with her. In addition he was taking organic chemistry at UCB too. My organic chemistry class at Ohlone college is about 90% pre-med students and Ninad as a pre-med student seemed to fit the requirement of an intern in all respects. Ninad was part of most of my meetings with the chemistry department at UCB. Tour of UCB facilities and labs. With Ninad and other professors I took tours of all the labs, saw the equipment, the green chemistry labs, set-ups etc. and came back with photos to compare. Recommendations for Ohlone College s Green Science building. During our discussion and tours we also discussed Ohlone s new science building. I obtained information from the chemistry faculty at UCB about other green science

3 buildings in the nation so that I could call and ask them for suggestions for our green labs in our new Science Center. A valuable piece of information that came out of this was the efficacy (or not) of so called green hoods. Lessons learnt from meetings with UCB. It came as a surprise to me that I was pretty much alone in this fight. UC Berkeley had developed some green labs in the area of General Chemistry. However they had an entire research program dedicated to having graduate students work out one lab after another and make them green. Barely about 10 labs had come out of that center that we could use. No similar research had being done for Organic Chemistry. Basically, I learnt that I would have to devise the entire Green Organic curriculum on my own. I would also have to come up with most of the General chemistry curriculum also on my own. We would then be the nations first college to teach an almost-entirely green organic and general curriculum. Note that by articulation requirements we could go only about 70-75% green. There would be other labs which were not completely green but I would modify them so that they would come close. NOVEMBER TO APRIL Searching chemistry journal databases (global database search). Along with my intern from UCB I spent these long months in doing data base searches from a global database of journals. The search was done as follows: a. A topic or a lab title from the curriculum (pre-discussed with UCB) was typed in the database b. This generated sometimes as many as 100 responses even though we had typed the word green on the search engine. c. I would then sift thru all these articles and eliminate papers based solely on two criteria, the first was that the lab had to be significantly green, secondly the lab content in the paper had to match our curriculum and SLO s of the course. I would also do an additional search to see if some other college had had done a similar lab or had listed it on their website so we would have a reference point. Time frame For all the new or modified experiments added to the curriculum, this procedure took almost months. Sometimes just one lab would take about 4 days to select after a rigorous literature search. How were the new labs green? a. Most of the labs are solvent less, and this reduced our toxic solvent purchase, exposure and disposal. b. Many of them were microwave assisted, so were energy efficient. c. In some cases chemical amounts were reduced so less exposure to chemicals was achieved.

4 d. In other cases current labs were modified and substitution was made to use benign chemicals rather than use the ones originally listed. MARCH TO MAY Entering Organic Chemistry curriculum in Curricunet for approval. Worked with Curricunet and the support team to get the new Organic chemistry lab curriculum approved by the curriculum committee. Note that by April the Organic Chemistry curriculum was about 80% done and we had only the General Chemistry course to work on. Ordering chemicals for to support new Organic Chemistry curriculum. In preparation for the new lab curriculum that would be taught starting Fall 2014, I started ordering the new chemicals. Van our Chemistry lab manager looked into the safety labeling on some of the chemicals we were ordering and this added one more layer of scrutiny to our chemical list. If Van found some chemical in the order list that was slightly more than the hazard level accepted for green labs then we would simply not order that chemical, or substitute that entire lab with another similar one using benign chemicals or we would think of a way to substitute this chemical and modify the current lab. On a different note, we also decided that since we were left with small amounts of non-green chemicals from previous years, we would use as many of them as possible in the academic year for the last time. This decision was taken as it was really expensive to dispose bulk amounts of unused organic chemicals. It was prudent therefore to use them up in our labs. AS THE SABBATICAL ENDS..MOVING FORWARD AND MY HURDLES The one obstacle that I have found was that unlike UCB which has a dedicated funding for the green institute, we do not have any financial support in this area. Thus it was not possible to test any of the labs as each lab needs its own set of chemicals and to buy a new set of chemicals for lab testing purposes would be huge financial drain. Besides, even if we had magically come up with funding, there was simply no time or dedicated lab facilities and resources available in the sabbatical to conduct all the lab experiments. Thus, I decided to incorporate UC Berkeley s Green Institute philosophy within my curriculum. Meaning, that I would test each lab as part of the regular curriculum and use my students enrolled in Chem 112, as an substitute for UCB s graduate student workforce.. This process has currently started and with every lab that is done, I make it more green (by modification or elimination of chemicals) and I document the revised procedure for use in a lab manual next year. I propose that as an institutional support, the CHEM 190-Research Methodology course be brought back in Spring so that my Chem 112-B

5 students can enroll in it and continue testing the labs to make them greener much like the Green Institute students in UCB. Finally after the end of the academic year, we would become the nations first green community college to have taught an entire green curriculum almost completely. This information along with our final green curriculum and lab listings should be disseminated in a national conference. I will present this as a paper at the 2015 National ACS (American Chemical Society) meeting to educate the academic community about Ohlone s new green curriculum that we have successfully conducted, presented and articulated. ORGANIC CHEMISTRY (NEW EXPERIMENTS) Organic Chemistry, A green lab compilation, Anu Ganguly and Ninad Bhat, Ohlone College publication 1. Green Suzuki reaction 2. Green Wittig reaction, microwave synthesis 3. Environmentally responsible redox chemistry 4. Green inquiry based Electrophillic aromatic substitution 5. Recyling PET plastics via Depolymerization 6. Analysis of cyclic acetal using aqueous solution instead of organic chemicals 7. Organic solvent-free phase transfer oxidation of alcohols 8. Green synthesis of Adipic acid 9. A Green aqueous based palladium crossed coupling 10. Reduction of ketone using Sodium borohydride and yeast 11. Extraction of heavy metals from environmental samples 12. Solvent free green Wittig synthesis 13. Solvent-free synthesis of chalcones 14. Synthesis of 7-Hydroxy-3-Carboxycoumarin in water 15. Alkene isomerization using a green solid acid 16. Green Michael and Aldol reaction 17. A greener approach for measuring colligative properties 18. A green polymerization of Aspartic acid 19. Microwave assisted green Heterocyclic chemistry 20. Mannich reaction-a green Structural Elucidation 21. Enantioselective reduction with carrot 22. A green alternative to Aluminum Chloride Alkylation of Xylene 23. Aqueous based Diels Alder reaction 24. Co-crystal controlled solid state (solvent free)synthesis 25. Solvent free Baeyer Villiger reaction

6 ORGANIC CHEMISTRY (CURRENT MODIFIED GREEN EXPERIMENTS) Organic Laboratory, A Greener Approach Anu Ganguly and Ninad Bhat Cengage Learning publication 26. Identification of an adulterated spice by TLC 27. Green isolation of Naproxin 28. Isolation of caffeine from tea bags 29. Green synthesis of acetyl salicylic acid 30. Green synthesis of acetaminophen 31. Natural fermentation of ethanol from sucrose 32. Extraction-Isolation of Trimyristin from nutmeg 33. A greener bromination of stillbene 34. A green reduction of ketones using carrots 35. Solventless Aldol reaction GENERAL CHEMISTRY General Chemistry is not a course taught by me at Ohlone College. However, in my research there were not enough green labs in the literature that meets the curriculum. I have listed all the ones that I could find in my research. These can be incorporated as part of curriculum under the heading cited and articulation will not be an issue. However list is not complete as many segments like Thermodyanamics etc. are left out as no suitable green labs are available that meets curriculum. The rest of the labs listed here may be incorporated in the curriculum New Experiments are from General Chemistry, A green lab compilation, Anu Ganguly and Ninad Bhat, Ohlone College publication DENSITY 1..Polymers-properties and density (UCB green institute) 2..Lava lamp density determination (new experiment) POLYMERS 3..Polymers-properties and application (UCB green institute) 4..Polymers-toy design in applications (UCB green institute) ACIDS AND BASES 5. Polymers Depolymerization and strong base titration (UCB green institute) 6. Acids- Depolymerization and a Ph titration (UCB green institute) EQUILIBRIUM 7. Products, reactants and dynamic equilibrium (UCB green institute) 8. Equilibrium investigations and the synthesis of a bio based ink (new experiment) 9. Kinetic study of the bleaching of Allura red (new experiment)

7 GREEN METHODOLOGY 10. Biofuels-toxicity (UCB green institute) 11. Synthesis and characterization of biofuels (UCB green institute) 12. Measuring ecotoxity using lettuce seed assay (new experiment) 13. Environmental and green analysis of nitrate or phosphate ions in surface water (new experiment) COMBUSTION 14. Combustion of biodiesel (new experiment) LIGHT AND HEAT 15. Inquiry on light (UCB green institute) INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS OF SOLID STATE CHEMISTRY 16. Pattering self-assembled monolayers on gold (new experiment) CALORIMETRY 17. Determination of heat of combustion of biodiesel using bomb-calorimetry (new experiment) CATION IDENTIFICATION 18. Analysis of cations (new experiment) 19. Greener analysis of qualitative analysis for cations without sulfur (new experiment) FORMULA OF A HYDRATE 20. Determination of a formula of a hydrate-greener approach (new experiment) OXIDATION AND REDUCTIONS 21. Resin based oxidation chemistry (new experiment) SPECTROSCOPY 22. Spectophotometric analysis of food dyes (new experiment) MOLECULAR MODELLING 23. Molecular mechanics modeling (new experiment)