How to Integrate Sustainability Into College Engineering Curricula
A pilot program across five U.S.-based higher education institutions is shedding light on successful steps toward systems change.
Engineering is one of the most fundamental contributors to human health and prosperity. From consumer goods to hardware and software products to buildings and modes of transportation, the solutions that engineers create are core to nearly every aspect of life. Their decisions regarding design, algorithms, source materials, production, distribution, and disposal can make positive or negative impacts now — and for lifetimes to come.
And as the climate crisis escalates, a shift in college engineering courses is critical to ensuring a future in which solutions are designed not only to solve problems and improve lives in equitable and inclusive ways, but also to safeguard the environment. In the job market, demand for “green talent” is surging as governments and companies worldwide adjust their policies to address climate change. This is why the Engineering For One Planet (EOP) initiative — catalyzed by The Lemelson Foundation and VentureWell — is working to transform engineering education to equip all engineers across all disciplines with the fundamental skills and principles of social and environmental sustainability.
Curricular change is never easy. It is a time-consuming process that involves aligning multiple stakeholders and persuading those who don’t automatically buy in. Even if all parties are in agreement, challenges persist. Changing a curriculum costs money. And it requires making changes in majors that are already crowded with mandatory courses. In engineering education particularly, curricular transformation is challenging because it requires integrating new skills and tools across a broad range of disciplines and degrees, from aeronautics to computer science to robotics.
The good news? Efforts to imbue sustainability across engineering education are yielding successful results, best practices, and — as captured in this 2022 literature review — recommendations for overcoming barriers. EOP led an initial pilot program to capture practical lessons for integrating sustainability in engineering courses at five large and small universities across the U.S., including a Hispanic-Serving Institution and public and private schools.
These institutions — Arizona State University (ASU), Oregon State University (OSU), University of Central Florida (UCF), University of Maryland (UMD), and Villanova University — are unlocking important lessons that will help light the way to a future filled with sustainability-minded engineers.
“In two years, these trailblazing faculty and schools impacted more than 4,000 students and are paving the way for embedding sustainability across engineering courses on their campuses,” says Cindy Cooper, who leads the EOP initiative at The Lemelson Foundation, where she is a Senior Program Officer.
These schools are some of the first to implement the EOP Framework, which offers a flexible menu of sustainability topics and professional skills — such as environmental literacy, materials choice, communications, and social responsibility — that align with ABET accreditation requirements. The EOP Framework was co-created with input from a community of hundreds of experts from a range of identities, lived experiences, geographies, and sectors including academia across engineering disciplines, industry, nonprofit, government, and philanthropy, with the goal of hearing and acting on a diverse array of voices and perspectives.
In some cases, the universities developed entirely new courses based on the Framework; in others, they integrated elements of the Framework into existing courses. Though each of the five pilot grantees pursued slightly different approaches to implementing the Framework into their engineering curricula, their approaches lifted up several key lessons that can serve as a model to other higher education institutions.
Incorporate the EOP Framework into a core course required for all engineering disciplines.
ASU incorporated the Framework into its EGR 201, a course all engineering majors are required to take as part of the “project-based spine,” a series of eight courses taken over a student’s four-year education. This ensured that all of their engineering students would receive early exposure to sustainability concepts and tools, thus instilling a sustainability-focused mindset at the outset of their engineering education. It also enabled them to quickly reach a large population of students by replicating changes across several sections of the same course.
Leverage existing university sustainability commitments and expertise.
Villanova’s success was facilitated by its university-wide commitment to sustainability, demonstrated by the work of its Sustainability Leadership Council — supported at the highest levels by the school’s President and Provost — and the fact that it had already identified the incorporation of sustainability into courses as a strategic university initiative. Villanova also tapped the expertise of a project team member who brought sustainability-focused tools that had been developed as part of a former consulting practice.
Integrate the EOP Framework into other transformative initiatives and efforts.
OSU tied the Framework directly to the new ENGR+ course rollout in its College of Engineering. Leveraging the existing change effort allowed OSU to begin from the ground floor, integrating EOP learning outcomes into the work that ENGR+ instructors were already doing as they created new courses.
Involve other university stakeholders and work with multiple departments.
Faculty change leaders who were passionate about the work were crucial to the success of the pilot programs. UMD engaged two separate departments — Mechanical Engineering and Civil Engineering — to provide differing perspectives and departmental cultures for achieving curricular change. It is also engaging the business and public policy schools to bring systems-level, cross-disciplinary perspectives to a wider swath of students beyond engineering. This will also be beneficial to the business and public policy schools, which valued the potential of adding engineering projects and students to their existing offerings. UCF engaged both undergraduate and graduate faculty and students, and is creating champions at various educational levels.
Create a Community of Practice (CoP) and share widely with students and faculty.
Leveraging its existing top-down support, Villanova focused on a bottom-up approach through faculty capacity-building on how to integrate EOP learning outcomes in diverse courses, bolstered by a Community of Practice (CoP) to foster regular peer interaction and learning. The EOP pilot grantees also participated in a CoP supported by VentureWell, which helped them not only learn from each other but also support each other through challenges and roadblocks.
Plan early for assessment.
OSU developed a comprehensive evaluation plan to assess student learning outcomes and the impact on their views of sustainability and career pathways. UCF shared evaluation data from students exposed to the new content to inspire other faculty and leadership and UMD collected comprehensive baseline data to allow an evaluation of the impact of course changes.
Capture and share tools and lessons learned.
Faculty change leaders from the pilot schools captured and shared teaching tools and experiences to help other faculty with similar aspirations. The EOP Framework provides a consistent language and set of outcomes that make it easier to create shareable resources.
The evidence of enthusiasm and student demand around these sustainability initiatives suggests that now is the time to effect change. Several of the schools reported that students valued seeing the real-world application of their engineering skills. And others indicated that sustainability content was a draw particularly for women engineering students and students from other groups that are underrepresented in engineering, which could help diversify the profession.
As one OSU faculty member puts it: “Enthusiasm around environmental, social, and economic sustainability is strong. Leverage this energy to build relationships among students, faculty, and industry partners that support and are supported by EOP.”
And it’s important to remember that the goal is to transform engineering education by fully integrating sustainability into existing curricula — in other words, says an ASU faculty member, “…Sustainability in engineering isn’t about creating another kind of engineering; it’s just good engineering.”
Suggested Citation: The Lemelson Foundation. “How to Integrate Sustainability into College Engineering Curricula.” Invention Notebook, Medium, 6 Dec. 2022, https://medium.com/invention-notebook/how-to-integrate-sustainability-into-college-engineering-curricula-8930cc99b3f5.
