Dr. Eric Carlson: Teaching Chemistry Through Civic Engagement and Systems Thinking

When Dr. Eric Carlson decided to major in chemistry as an undergraduate, he wasn’t entirely sure where that path would lead. The one thing he did know was that he loved chemistry. 

That passion carried him from earning his bachelor’s degree at Brigham Young University to completing a PhD in Chemistry at the University of California Berkeley. Along the way, however, he discovered something equally important: he loved helping people of all ages learn. 

During graduate school, Eric became involved in BYU’s peer tutoring program, where he found joy in working directly with students. Although he initially imagined becoming a university professor, he soon realized that much of higher education centered heavily on research, grant writing, and administration. What he valued most were meaningful relationships with students and helping young people develop confidence in themselves. 

Despite having opportunities to pursue a career in higher education after earning his doctorate, Eric chose a different path. He earned his teaching credentials to grow his skillset in classroom management, pedagogy, and creating productive learning experiences for young minds. While he had a deep understanding of the subject he was most passionate about, chemistry, Eric recognized something valuable: that knowing a subject well does not necessarily translate into knowing how to teach it effectively. He chose to expand his skills beyond his PhD to learn how to turn his knowledge and passion into meaningful learning experiences for his future students. 

In 2010, Eric and his wife moved to Washington, drawn to the close knit communities of the Pacific Northwest. Since then, he has taught science at Royal High School in the Royal School District, where one of his greatest motivations has been ensuring that rural students have access to exceptional science education. 

Making Science Come Alive 

For Eric, science education should never feel disconnected from students’ lives. He believes much of traditional science instruction can become sterile and lifeless.  

“Students often spend time studying answers to questions they aren’t asking.” 

Over the past several years, he has intentionally redesigned his chemistry curriculum around community based issues that students encounter every day. Plastic pollution became a natural entry point because plastics are woven into nearly every aspect of modern life. Rather than teaching chemistry as a collection of isolated concepts, Eric uses it to help students understand the world around them and their place within it. His classroom blends chemistry with systems thinking, civic engagement, and environmental problem solving.

Why Plastic Pollution Belongs in Chemistry 

Plastic pollution isn’t simply an environmental topic in Eric’s classroom. It’s a chemistry topic, a civic topic, and a systems topic. He believes many of today’s greatest environmental challenges are often described as scientific problems we need to find a solution for or something to solve, yet the scientific community has long established clear solutions to responding to the issue. He points to examples like climate change, plastic pollution, and even the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Global warming isn’t a science problem. Scientists solved that a long time ago. The challenge is getting everyone on board to address it.” 

Because of this, Eric believes environmental education should prepare students not only to understand scientific evidence, but also to participate in democratic processes and community decision-making to help bring real, viable solutions to life. 

Helping Students See Systems 

One of the biggest ideas Eric introduces is systems thinking. In his classroom, students explore how incentives, economics, and power shape environmental decisions through a concept he calls “Concentrated Benefit, Diffuse Harm.” 

To explain it, Eric offers a simple thought experiment: Imagine every American gave him one penny each year. Most people would never notice the cost, but he would suddenly receive millions of dollars annually and have every incentive to preserve that arrangement. This is then used as a jumping off point for students to explore how similar dynamics can emerge in environmental issues. Benefits may be concentrated among a relatively small number of corporations or industries, while environmental costs are distributed across millions of people. Understanding these systems helps students move beyond surface level explanations and examine why lasting environmental challenges can be so difficult to solve. 

Eric encourages students to recognize how this dynamic often plays out in the plastics economy. Companies profit from producing and selling disposable products, while many of the downstream costs are put onto society. Taxpayers fund waste management and litter cleanups, communities experience polluted parks, rivers, and coastlines, and ecosystems absorb the long-term impacts of plastic pollution. At the same time, much of the public conversation focuses on individual responsibility through messages like “don’t be a litterbug” or “recycle more”. While Eric believes personal actions matter, he challenges students to also ask broader questions about how systems are designed, who benefits from them, and where responsibility for preventing pollution should ultimately lie. 

Putting Faces to Decision Makers 

Eric also encourages students to stop thinking about “government” or “corporations” as abstract institutions. Instead, he focuses on identifying the actual people making decisions by asking questions like: Who are they? What organizations do they represent? How do they influence policy? 

One of his yearly projects asks students to investigate a chemistry related issue affecting their own community, identify the actual names of relevant decision makers, write an advocacy email, and send it. The results can be powerful. In one case, a student’s letter prompted a personal phone call from their mayor. For Eric, experiences like these help students realize that civic engagement is something they can participate in today, not just some ambiguous time in the future. 

Looking Beyond Greenwashing 

Eric also challenges students to think critically about corporate sustainability claims. Using historical and modern case studies, students examine examples including tobacco companies, leaded gasoline, the Radium Girls, Nestlé, climate change denial, plastic recycling campaigns, and more. 

In one activity, Eric assigns students to read three news articles covering a plastic film recycling plant in Minnesota that closed only two months after opening its doors. Students then answer a series of questions designed to help them think critically about plastic recycling claims, industry misinformation, and greenwashing. They compare corporate messaging with documented actions and outcomes to determine whether those claims match reality. Here’s a link to the articles and questionnaire. 

As Eric reminds them: “Look less at what companies say and more at what they do.” 

Inspiring Hope Through Collective Action 

While Eric sees value in individual environmental actions, he believes many plastic pollution lessons stop there. Beach cleanups, recycling, and personal choices all matter, but he encourages students to ask deeper questions like who benefits from the current systems and who has the power to change it. Students investigate corporate accountability, public policy, industry influence, and civic participation alongside individual stewardship. His goal is not to diminish personal action, but to help students recognize that lasting environmental solutions require change at multiple levels. 

Though, even while discussing difficult realities, Eric is intentional about ending with hope rather than despair. He reminds students that history is filled with examples of people working together to solve problems once thought impossible. One message he frequently shares is: “Individually we are a drop. Collectively, we are an ocean.” 

He also encourages students to spend less energy trying to persuade those firmly opposed to change and spend more energy connecting with people who are open to learning. Perhaps his most enduring lesson for his students is one that extends far beyond chemistry: “Don’t let the fact that you can’t do everything stop you from doing anything.” 

Learning by Doing 

Throughout the year, Eric’s students engage in hands-on investigations that connect chemistry with civic life, including: 

• Researching local environmental issues and writing advocacy emails to decision makers

• Participating in a Prisoner’s Dilemma activity that explores incentives and cooperation

• Mapping corporate leadership and systems of influence 

• Analyzing case studies on plastic pollution, recycling campaigns, greenwashing, and industry lobbying 

These experiences encourage students to see science not simply as something to learn, but as an effective tool for understanding and improving their own communities. 

One Responsibility We Cannot Outsource 

After years of teaching, Eric has spent considerable time reflecting on what education should accomplish. Modern society allows us to outsource many responsibilities. We pay others to grow our food, repair our vehicles, or cut our hair. But there is one responsibility, he says, that belongs to each of us: civic engagement. 

“You cannot outsource your role in society.” 

For Eric, preparing students to participate thoughtfully in their communities is just as important as teaching chemistry. By combining scientific understanding with systems thinking and civic action, he hopes his students leave his classroom not only with a deeper understanding of chemistry, but also with the confidence to help shape a better future.