Not your typical chemistry class

Chemistry is much more than balancing equations and examining molecules – just ask Dr. Peter Mahaffy. Students in his classes at The King’s University don’t study isolated science reactions; they use a “systems thinking” approach to look for the intrinsic connections between scientific concepts, the earth, social systems and people.

When I took Mahaffy’s Chemistry 290 course, it was lovingly dubbed “chemistry for poets.” Each class began with a prayer and devotional featuring visual artwork or creative prose, including Mahaffy’s own poetry. But he didn’t just share art with us – he challenged us to create our own. In one project, Mahaffy asked us to represent an environmental issue through a creative piece. Finished projects included stories, a painting, poems and even one song, each of which combined science with art and faith to show systems thinking.

Mahaffy has taught Chemistry 290 many times over his 43-year teaching career at King’s, along with other courses that encourage students to bring their unique gifts and multi-disciplinary experiences to the study of chemistry. All along, Mahaffy has been sowing seeds of abstract, connection-based thinking into the formation of the science program. Such seeds now bear fruit through projects such as The King’s Centre for Visualization in Science (KCVS), collaborations with the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and work for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Award-winning work

Six months after I finished my last Chemistry 290 class, I sat down with Mahaffy over coffee to talk about some exciting news: his lifetime of work on chemistry education has now earned him the 2025 George C. Pimentel Award in Chemical Education from the American Chemical Society. The award will be presented in San Diego in March. Mahaffy will select eight of his colleagues and collaborators to accompany him to the award acceptance gala and symposium held in his honour.

“This is an individual award, but it’s an award that’s owned by a village,” Mahaffy says, crediting the KCVS team and various other colleagues. If systems thinking is all about connections between societal and Earth systems, it makes sense that Mahaffy’s work depends on a community of researchers. “None of this work is work I’ve done on my own. It’s really wonderful to collaborate with people over many years who have pushed forward these ideas.”

Mahaffy specifically acknowledges the contributions of his Australian colleagues, with whom he co-authored a textbook called Chemistry: Human Activity, Chemical Reactivity. The structure of the textbook is unique when compared to others in the chemistry field as each chapter begins with a story that points further than the concepts, tools and techniques of the profession; it expands to who we are as human beings and how the tools of chemistry can be used to tackle global challenges such as climate change, water quality, food security and poverty.

Solving bigger problems

The complexity of chemistry can be intimidating for many people, including myself. Learning formulas and equations in high school chemistry without knowing their context makes it difficult for humanities-minded students to understand. Systems thinking, however, draws in ideas and concepts, allowing students to understand the field of chemistry from a holistic perspective. To explain the technique of systems thinking, Mahaffy provides the example of the Haber-Bosch chemical procedure for making ammonia. To begin, students might look at the technical process of making it. Then they might ask questions that expand understanding – for example, “where do the nitrogen and hydrogen atoms come from? What is ammonia used for?” Part of the answer is that the Haber-Bosch process is responsible for creating fertilizer that has fed the world and allowed for 40 percent of the world’s population to be here today. Another part of the answer is to also acknowledge the negative effect of the ammonia process, which includes the buildup of harmful biogeochemical flows from fertilizer runoff and the production of potent greenhouse gases.

“Chemistry needs to move away from being insular, from presenting isolated facts to students,” Mahaffy explains, adding that this is still the common method of teaching around the world. But he’s excited to see change on the horizon.

“Systems thinking and integral sustainability considerations are catching on in the profession of chemistry,” he says. “The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and other groups [have] been working since 2017 to get systems thinking formally embedded in the profession.”

Mahaffy’s work with systems thinking has taken him to many parts of the world; he’s given over 150 talks in 29 countries, though the carbon impact of travel means that he lectures virtually when he can. Last year, he travelled to Thailand, where he gave a plenary lecture to a large group of educators on what the world might look like by 2050, and to New Zealand to speak at a national conference of secondary school science educators. In February, he will go to McGill University to give a seminar.

For each of these engagements, he brings lessons and tools from KCVS with him. As the Centre for Visualization in Science continues to gain traction, future goals include the creation of an interactive learning tool on the colours of hydrogen. This will be next summer’s focus and King’s undergraduate students will be hired to help with the project.

Reasons for hope

Near the end of our conversation, I ask Mahaffy where he finds hope in the midst of environmental damage and seemingly unsolvable crises. He says that he is a very hopeful person. His grandchildren are one source of his optimism. He also loves hopping on his bicycle to work every day, where he has the opportunity to see colleagues and students striving to deliver hope and healing in their circles of influence. He appreciates that the King’s vision statement, which encourages students to “build a more humane, just, and sustainable world,” is “a hand-in-glove” fit with systems thinking.

“You can’t live hope if you’re blind to the brokenness,” he says. “You can only meaningfully tackle the brokenness in the right way if you understand deeply what’s wrong with our planet, what’s wrong with our climate, [and] what’s broken in terms of human relations.” But most importantly, he says, you must be committed to working in and with learning communities that are determined to find solutions.

Global impact

The King’s Centre for Visualization in Science (KCVS) is a research centre founded by Dr. Peter Mahaffy and Professor Emeritus Brian Martin in 2005. What followed was a comprehensive set of interactive resources to help people see and understand science. Now accessed by half a million people globally each year, its success has allowed for the annual employment of four to five undergraduate students. 

KCVS has had the opportunity to collaborate with chemists such as Sarah Cornell from the Stockholm Resilience Center, who has provided insight into projects that display the method of connected thinking in relation to our world’s climate crisis. One such example is the Planetary Boundaries Framework, which was used for the UN International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development in 2022. It outlines Earth’s nine planetary boundaries to show the viewer the connection between each system of Earth, and how anthropogenic environmental destruction is pushing these systems closer to surpassing their thresholds. 

Mahaffy says that a significant goal of KCVS is to increase our understanding of human impact on Earth’s tipping points and “translating that into solutions-oriented interactive learning tools that are accessible for everyone.”