Assessing Achievement of Sustainability Skills in the Environmental and Civil Engineering Curriculum

Abstract

Sustainability as a central issue and as a skill set has become an increasingly important part of engineering education for Civil and Environmental Engineers. ABET criteria for both Environmental and Civil Engineering currently contain language stressing sustainability but the development of curriculum components for these degree programs does not yet have an established norm, with some efforts directed at spreading sustainability across the curriculum in a modular fashion within upper level topics and other efforts directed at one, two or three course sequences specifically focused on sustainability. A body of sustainability pedagogy does exist and has been strongly promoted by both AEESP and NSF and is now a topic of discussion by ASCE. Florida Gulf Coast University was established in the late 1990’s as a “green university’ as part of the State University System in Florida. The school has environmental sustainability as part of its formal mission in a region acutely sensitive to climate change and dependent on the construction and tourism industries and continuous growth for economic stability in a shrinking and fragile ecosystem. As part of the original design of the Environmental Engineering curriculum, a Sustainability in Engineering course was established and first taught in the 2008-2009 academic year. The senior-level course is required for Environmental Engineers and serves as an environmental elective for many Civil Engineers. Performance in the senior level Sustainability course varies widely. Good students in both disciplines achieve student learning outcomes at high taxonomic levels. Weaker students in Environmental Engineering also have high outcome achievement. A large cohort of Civil Engineers however, fall short in achieving learning outcomes at the highest levels. This study attempts to assess these differences and improve overall achievement of sustainability skills for Civil Engineering students. We will use initial survey instruments in these classes as well as in at least one additional Civil Engineering class (sustainability focus included) to assess student attitudes and depth of knowledge prior to and after completion of the Fundamentals of Environmental Engineering course in sophomore year and prior to and after the Sustainability course in senior year. Data has been collected this year (senior level evaluated at end of year) and will continue to be collected over the next several years continuing a longitudinal study that will focus on our students’ developing levels of expertise in formulating sustainable solutions to real life engineering problems.