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Summer Professional Development for Educators
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Penn State Harrisburg received a grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Environmental Education Grants Program to develop materials and resources available for middle, junior high or high school teachers who include environmental education in their curriculum that address the Academic Standards for Environment and Ecology in the area of Hazardous Waste. The work products to be developed and delivered in this program include: a resource guide, four teacher workshops to be delivered summer 2003 that will provide lesson plans and an instructional manual, and an interactive teacher exchange web page. The resource guide will include curricular material on the sub-topics of the workshops and be available on the web. The workshop content will be built around the following sub-topics: a. Fundamentals b. Sources/Prevention, c. Environmental Health Effects and d. Remediation

Background
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The quality of the environment touches on every aspect of life and is crucial to maintaining and enhancing human health and well-being. The interactions between humans and the environment are complex. Without an understanding of basic scientific principles underlying environmental concerns, citizens will not be prepared to engage in the democratic process of developing and implementing appropriate policy.

Today's world is complicated with sophisticated technologies producing unprecedented amount of consumer, and other goods. Many of these processes produce hazardous wastes, materials that because of their intrinsic properties pose a risk to human health. A hazardous waste is any material, to be discarded, which exhibits any of the following characteristics: Ignitability, Corrosivity, Reactivity, or Toxicity. In order to prevent harm to individuals and the environment, appropriate management and disposal of these materials is necessary as well as remediation of areas contaminated with these wastes.

Disposal and remediation, while essential to correcting the problems of the past, are end-of-the-pipeline reactive solutions. The students of today, who will be the decision makers of tomorrow, must be aware of proactive solutions to these problems. Thus, students must be trained in pollution prevention as an essential part of hazardous waste management and minimization.