- Environmental Fridays

Seeks to:

• Inspire and immerse, educate and engage the next generation of youth in environmental concerns,
  
  
• Promote evidence-based, socially responsible critical thinking about the environment and sustainability,
  
  
• Create awareness around environmental justice challenges, problems, and issues,
  
  
• Supplement core science classes and content with real-world, environment-based examples and applications,
  
  
• Provide career information in the environmental and sustainability fields,
  
  
• Create an accessible network of role models and mentors for students in the environmental and sustainability fields,
  
  
• Brainstorm and encourage individual and or corporate environmental action.

- Director

Dr. Desmond Hartwell Murray is Founding Director of Environmental Fridays; an online environmental education guest lecture series organized under his Building Excellence in Science and Technology (BEST Early) federal nonprofit organization. He is also co-Founder of the community focused A 4 Asthma program that grew out of Environmental Fridays. He is Editor and Columnist for Benton Spirit Community Newspaper, and Lead Editor for and Chapter Author in the 2016 American Chemical Society Symposium book – The Power and Promise of Early Research.

He earned a BSc in Chemistry from Andrews University, a PhD in Chemistry (Organic Synthesis) from Wayne State University, and was a postdoctoral fellow in chemistry at Harvard University. He was recognized as the 2010 Thought Leader in Science Education for Southwest Michigan, as the 2012 College Teacher of the Year for the State of Michigan, and as a 2018 recipient of Andrews University’s highest faculty honor – the John Nevins Andrews Medallion.

Environmental Fridays emerged from my desire and decision to make chemistry more real, relevant and interesting to my high school students. It began in my Grade 10 chemistry class at the Berrien County Math Science Center on the campus of Andrews University. I decided that contextualizing chemistry in environmental science, topics, and real-world issues would be an excellent pedagogical approach. This way students would begin to connect basic chemical knowledge with topics such as pollution, climate change, biodiversity, environmental health, and sustainability.

Environmental Fridays seeks to inspire and engage; to bring environmental awareness and encourage community action. Our target audience includes high school and college students, youth, and the public. We are also very interested in connecting and collaborating with the expanding home-schooling education sector.

Environmental Fridays also addresses a deficiency in American education reported in a 2018 study by the Geological Society of America. It indicated that only two states require environmental science for high school graduation. In addition, most high school chemistry books have a chapter on water but still do not have chapters on air or soil chemistry. As a chemistry professional, I believe the lack of exposure to fundamental environmental science education leads to critical and consequential misunderstandings. It negatively impacts how many view our role towards practices and policies regarding pollution, loss of biodiversity, climate change, and environmental inequities.

- Catch The Action

Click on these links to see the schedule, speaker bios, and last year’s guest lectures.