The Chemical Industry Education Centre (CIEC), located in the chemistry department at the University of York, in England, is engaged in a number of activities in the U.K. that aim to address both needs.

"As youngsters, we develop strong perceptions on issues that can stick with us for life," observes CIEC manager Miranda Stephenson. "For industry, this is particularly important, as public perceptions can have a direct impact on its activities. The perception that the chemical industry is an unexciting, dirty, or dangerous place to work in also adversely affects career choices."

CIEC aims to counter this negative image and enhance the reputation of the chemical industry by developing a range of educational activities and resources and by promoting partnerships between schools and industry. The center publishes teaching and learning resources on science, technology, and industry; operates websites (available at http://www.ciec.org.uk) on topics such as catalysis, sustainable development, greener industry, and risk; and offers in-service training for teachers and industrialists. It also provides an information service for schools and industry in the U.K.

The center was established in 1988 as a joint venture between the University of York and the U.K.'s Chemical Industries Association (CIA). The university provides facilities for the center and the active collaboration of its academic staff. CIA supports the center with funding that covers core staff salaries and direct costs.

"CIEC was set up specifically at the request of CIA to be the body that liaises with schools, develops new ideas for improving the teaching of chemistry, and develops ways of increasing the awareness of youngsters of the chemical industry," explains John Holman, professor of chemical education at the university. "The center provides schools with information about industry--either in a proactive or reactive mode--and also works with industrialists, showing them, for example, how to coordinate effectively with schools."

CIEC'S PROJECTS are tailored for young people in specific age ranges. For example, some projects target five- to 11-year-old children in British primary schools. Other projects aim at students in the 11- to 18-year age group in the country's secondary schools or at narrower age ranges within these two bands.

Stephenson points out that the chemical industry has a major impact on the range of products and services offered by the center.

"Chemical companies, or groups of companies, are both customers of CIEC's projects and services and also sponsors of our educational projects," she tells C&EN. "A typical example is a company that may want to invite groups of 11- to 14-year-olds from local schools to one of its sites. The company will come to us with a specific request on how to make the visits worthwhile.

"We work with the company, look at the site, and train the people there to think of the site as a science resource," Stephenson continues. "We make sure that they don't take the youngsters on the same tour that they would give to a local politician. We tailor the visit to what the group is learning in the classroom. If, for example, they are studying energy transfer, we would encourage the company to show the group how water and steam is used for energy transfer and how the energy is captured in cooling towers. A group of post-16-year-old students, on the other hand, might go into an analytical laboratory to look at a mass spectrometer and other instrumental techniques."

CIEC has published more than 70 books on chemistry-related topics that are targeted at specific stages of the school science curriculum in the U.K. They include "The Essential Chemical Industry" (York, U.K: CIEC, 4th Ed., 1999), which is aimed at 16- to 18-year-olds. The book provides insights into the organization and function of the British chemical industry and information about the manufacture of specific chemicals or groups of chemicals.

Sections of the book are devoted to metals, nonmetals, inorganics, organics, and polymers. Three pages on polyethylene, for example, describe the manufacture of the low-density, linear low-density, and high-density forms of the polymer and outline the uses and levels of production of each form. There are also chapters on agrochemicals, ceramics, dyestuffs, soaps, and similar topics.

The publication was sponsored by the chemical company Atofina and the Salters' Institute of Industrial Chemistry, which was set up in 1918 as a charity by the London-based Salters Co. to support chemistry teaching in the U.K.

One of CIEC's most successful ventures has been its "Children Challenging Industry" project, which involves around 140 primary schools in four regions in the north of England, and includes 4,250 children, 1,280 teachers, and 85 companies.

	FORGING LINKS Holman (left) and Stephenson promote collaboration between British schools and chemical companies. PHOTO BY MICHAEL FREEMANTLE

CIEC's Joy Parvin, who manages the project, observes that few teachers in British primary schools have a strong background in science and that science is a fairly new addition to the primary curriculum in the U.K. Consequently, some primary school teachers have little confidence in teaching science.

"The project provides classroom-based training for teachers in the teaching of the national curriculum for science," Parvin notes. "One of the objectives is to improve children's perceptions of the chemical industry and its relationship with science."

A CIEC-appointed advisory teacher in each of the four regions works with 35 primary schools and up to 40 companies in the chemical and allied industries to establish effective school-industry links. Each adviser provides in-service training in science for teachers; gives advice and training to company personnel; and, where possible, arranges site visits for one class of nine- to 11-year-olds per school.

"Pupils, teachers, and even industry have benefited enormously from this initiative," Parvin observes. "And what's more, almost everyone who has taken part has been eager to do so again."

In December of last year, for example, a group of youngsters at Grange Lane Junior School in Scunthorpe visited a Novartis plant in Humberside, one of the four regions participating in the project. According to Gayle Pook, the advisory teacher who organized the visit, a team of engineering apprentices at Novartis went to great lengths creating impressive props which brought to life the processes within the plant.

"The children were bowled over when our tour guide unfolded an enormous filter, the size of the room we were standing in, to demonstrate just what one looked like and how it worked," Pook reports.

Novartis training manager Alan Hannath, who is responsible for coordinating school visits, comments that all the staff benefit from such visits. "Staff from right across the board are involved in the school trips, and they are rotated where possible to help others gain from the experience," he explains. "It's totally enthralling to watch the children's hands shoot up, slowly at first, and then with more confidence, to answer questions about water in industry and heat exchange. What's more, the sight of these children walking round in their child-size safety helmets and spectacles has become a talking point among everyone here, and it gives us a good feeling about what we are doing for them."

THE VISITS have been repeated by about 10 schools this year. They are invaluable in helping to overcome children's negative perceptions of the chemical industry, Hannath says. "The majority of children, when asked in the closing sessions if they want to work in the chemical industry, say 'yes,' " he notes. "They say they want to be scientists, engineers, work in a laboratory, or even become managers."

CIEC has developed a number of websites that aim to improve primary school children's and their teachers' understanding of common processes found in the chemical and allied industries. One such site, funded by ExxonMobil and the U.K.'s Association of Science Education, is called "Industry-animated." The site illustrates the workings of a cooling tower, a heat exchanger, a reaction vessel, a filter press, an extruder, and a brine evaporator.

"We had the primary school teacher in mind when we designed this site," Stephenson explains. "The teacher might, for example, be introducing a process like filtration to a class of young children by filtering something through a colander, a sieve, or pantyhose. We wanted the teacher to see how filtration is carried out on a large scale in industry."

CIEC's website "Children Exploring Colour and Industry" (available at http://www.uyseg.org/colour) is also designed to encourage children to take an interest in industry. The site, which is sponsored by the British Colour Makers Association and the Society of Dyers & Colourists, was launched at the Colour Museum, Bradford, England, in October 2001. It features 25 teaching and learning activities for the primary classroom that use color as a context. Within three months of its launch, over a thousand teachers had registered on the site.

"The website is aimed at nine- to 11-year-old children," Stephenson says. "The activities predominantly relate to the science and technology of color, although some apply to other areas of the school curriculum such as literature, geography, and history."

Another CIEC website that is attracting attention, according to Stephenson, encourages secondary school students to explore the concept of risk. Development of the site was funded by the London-based Institute of Materials, which, in June of this year, merged with the Institute of Mining & Metallurgy to form the Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining (IOM³).

"The site helps students to understand that risk is a combination of hazard and probability," Stephenson says. "It is an interactive site. Students are asked to look at photographs of a chemical plant and a street for example. They can roll their cursor over pictures to indicate where hazards may occur. We don't want students to think that hazards are just the province of industrial sites, so we show them that crossing a road is also a hazard.

"We have recently been approached about the project by Transform Corp., a consulting company in Tokyo that specializes in cultural, educational, and communication-oriented projects," she continues. "The company is currently creating a website to educate the general public in Japan about risk. It would like to use a Japanese version of some of the activities on our site to introduce the concepts of risk."

Last month, CIEC launched a website that focuses on sustainable development. The site targets 11- to 16-year-old students and provides a large number of case studies that illustrate sustainable development activities being carried out by the chemical industry, such as waste reduction, energy saving, and raw-materials conservation.

A related CIEC website, titled "Greener Industry," is currently being developed for launch early next year. The site will introduce 16- to 18-year-old students and their teachers to the principles and practice of green chemistry.

The core of the material on the site will consist of "chemical stories" on topics such as ethanol, chlorine, ammonia, fertilizers, phosphoric acid, and supercritical carbon dioxide. Each story incorporates up-to-date data and information about the manufacturing processes and information about the environmental and health issues associated with the use and disposal of each product.

"We hope that students and teachers will feed back their suggestions and improvements to the site," Mann says. "The intention is for the site to develop into a major educational resource for those interested in the chemical industry and environmental issues worldwide."

In another ongoing project, CIEC is putting the finishing touches on a website for post-16-year-old students on catalysis and its applications. The website (available at http://www.uyseg.org/catalysis) is sponsored by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council in a jointly funded project with the Institute of Applied Catalysis (iAc) as part of EPSRC's public awareness awards scheme. EPSRC is one of six British research councils that provide government funds for research projects in universities and colleges; iAc is a U.K. not-for-profit organization that promotes academic-industrial collaboration in catalysis.

"The iAc education committee drew up a strategy some years ago that included seeking a method to enhance the awareness of catalysis in the school-age population," iAc education manager Tim Lester tells C&EN. "The Web project, working with the expert team at CIEC, provided an effective way of doing this."

In addition, he says, iAc hopes that the site will stimulate a more widespread public awareness of the important role that catalysis plays in people's lives. "The best outcome from iAc's point of view would be that a few really able school pupils develop an interest in catalysis, which they pursue as a career," he continues. "Even if the numbers are very small, it would be worthwhile, as iAc would like to see more really able people available for recruitment by academia and industry."

Lester points out that the project pulls together state-of-the-art knowledge of catalysis from iAc members in industry and academia and couples this information with CIEC's expertise in developing chemistry education resources.

"There is an immense variety of information on the site that is certainly relevant to the chemistry courses we run for 16- to 18-year-olds," remarks John Dexter, chemistry teacher at Trinity School, Nottingham, who piloted the website. "The text is well written and accurate, and the diagrams enhance the text." The site, he says, is ideal for independent learning and useful for reviewing.

Jonathan Lewis, one of the Nottingham students who used the site, was impressed. "The site is a good tool to consolidate and improve notes throughout the course, and the information we needed was easy to find," he comments. "I found the pages on the effect of catalysts on rate, activation energies, reaction mechanisms, and poisoning particularly helpful."

As well as covering the principles of catalysis, the site has numerous pages on the applications of catalysis in areas such as energy conversion, pollution control, foods and flavorings, and fertilizers.

The home page of the catalysis website points out that the Chinese symbol for a catalyst is the same as that for a marriage broker, adding that a catalyst brings reactants together in a way that makes reaction more likely.

"I see my own job, as CIEC manager, as a marriage broker between schools and industry," Stephenson concludes. "At CIEC, we marry the primary and secondary science curricula in Britain with industry, and develop professional resources that students and teachers can use.

"We also see ourselves as storytellers," she adds. "We try to find stories that attract the attention of youngsters, whether they are five or 15, and at the same time communicate science to them."

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Copyright © 2002 American Chemical Society