Educating for sustainability: opportunities in undergraduate engineering

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Abstract

Awareness of the complex and interrelated environmental, economic and social problems in our world is increasing; the sustainability debate no longer focuses on whether changes are necessary but on what kind of changes are needed and how they can be carried out. Engineers are increasingly looked to for sustainable solutions yet find themselves less than adequately prepared to provide answers. Education is consistently identified as one of the key strategies for facilitating sustainable development; the required shift in the thinking, values and actions of individuals and institutions calls for efforts to make sustainability concerns a central theme of all education. This paper examines ways to better prepare engineers for the challenges of sustainable development and to increase the effectiveness of their solutions.

Introduction

In many ways the effectiveness of engineering education is beyond dispute. Engineers have responded to societal needs for transportation, sanitation, health care, communication, energy production, waste management, and pollution control systems. Sustainable development, however, poses an array of problems that go far beyond what is generally found in the textbooks or experiences provided as part of engineers' formal training. The problems to be addressed are more complex, clients are more differentiated and extend beyond the immediate user/client of engineering services, and there is an increasing demand for engineering solutions which respond to a variety of social and political challenges. Business wants a competitive edge both in design and cost solutions; consumers want more convenient, reliable, safe, affordable products; government and society at large want solutions to economic, social and environmental problems and assurance that technological solutions are developed with full understanding of the social, economic and environmental contexts and without negative impacts on these contexts. Tension and conflict exists between the interests and goals of these overlapping constituencies and must be mediated. The intense demands and expectations from business, consumers and government are increasingly focused on the engineering profession.

The demands require that engineers understand and effectively respond to sustainable development challenges. Unfortunately, research [1] reveals that engineers' knowledge, skills and/or practices for sustainable development are deficient or problematic in a number of areas; as a result, engineers' ability to contribute to sustainable development effectively is compromised. Challenges in practice have been discussed elsewhere and will not be considered here explicitly. Rather, this paper considers ways in which sustainability concerns could be given higher priority and better integrated in engineers' preparatory education.

A brief overview of the concept and principles of sustainable development is provided. Goals of engineering education are reviewed and “new” goals attentive to sustainability demands are proposed. Evidence of gaps between the real and ideal provide the impetus for finding ways to better incorporate sustainability concerns into engineers' preparatory education. Options for incorporating sustainability into the curriculum are examined; examples and recommendations for optimizing the success of approaches are offered.

Section snippets

Sustainable development

More than 10 years after popularization of the terms “sustainable development” and “sustainability,” it may seem unnecessary to define them — especially for those who have been working to facilitate movement towards sustainability, and in a journal that aims to “help ensure a sustainable environment.” Nonetheless, it is true that people have slightly different interpretations of sustainable development. In the main, differences exist in the degree to which interpretations tend to emphasize

Goals of engineering education

Safeguarding (and also improving) human health and well-being has long been of paramount importance to the engineering profession. As such, it should not be surprising to find sustainability goals and principles encompassed by engineering codes of practice. Detailed analysis of policy documents, codes of ethics and practice of the Canadian engineering profession reveals that goals and underlying requirements of sustainable development are well-aligned with those encompassed by the engineering

The vision

Sustainability implies a new, broader set of boundary conditions of contemporary decision-making. In particular, it calls for a consideration of expanded time and space horizons and an examination of cross-disciplinary effects during the process of transforming the earth's resources into goods and services that meet human needs and wants [7].

Our knowledge of ecosystems and the interdependence of technology and society is rapidly increasing. Engineers will need a good grasp of global systems and

Curriculum options

As social, technological, economic, and ecological systems have grown more complex, the demand for technological and organizational expertise has increased. In particular, people with a broad interdisciplinary outlook (“specialists of the general”) are being sought out to offer systemic approaches that are capable of dealing with the complexity of the problems and the tasks we face [8].

As previously noted, achieving the ideals of the engineering profession, inclusive of those pertaining to

Conclusion

Students, educators and practicing engineers alike must seek out opportunities to have their assumptions challenged and guard against meek or resigned acceptance of beliefs and practices that can and should be changed. Initiative and leadership are essential components of creating change. We cannot be expected to change the world but we can be expected to try. We can expect the changes we desire will occur gradually; we should not expect that they will occur in the absence of initiative and

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