Ever deeper and wider: incorporating sustainability into a practitioner oriented engineering curriculum

Area of Science:

• Environmental Engineering Education
• Sustainable Development in Engineering

Background:

• Global sustainability discussions by governments and NGOs highlight the need for practical solutions.
• Engineering graduates require specialized skills to design and implement sustainable community futures.
• Integrating sustainability into engineering curricula presents challenges due to the need for holistic and context-specific skills.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the critical need for sustainability integration in graduate and postgraduate engineering education.
• To explore the importance of cross-disciplinary thinking for sustainability-relevant engineering knowledge.
• To report on the design and implementation of a postgraduate module focused on sustainable process design.

Main Methods:

• Review of the rationale for incorporating sustainability into engineering curricula.
• Discussion of cross-disciplinary approaches in sustainability education.
• Design and deployment of a postgraduate module titled "Process design for sustainability" within a water engineering program.

Main Results:

• The study examined the challenges and necessities of embedding sustainability into engineering syllabi.
• Cross-disciplinary thinking was identified as crucial for developing sustainability-competent engineers.
• The postgraduate module provided practical experience in sustainable process design for water engineering students.

Conclusions:

• There is a pressing need to equip engineering graduates with sustainability design skills.
• Effective sustainability education requires integrating holistic and context-specific knowledge, often through cross-disciplinary approaches.
• The developed module offers valuable insights for best practices in engineering education for sustainability.