Case Studies Can Fill a Critical Need in Environmental Engineering Education

Abstract

Case studies are pedagogic tools that impart learning experiences through simulated problem-solving and discussion-provoking exercises that describe “real-world” situations. Edwin F. Gay, the first dean of Harvard Business School ~HBS!, is credited with adapting the case method of instruction in his college as early as 1911 ~Harvard Business School 2005!. HBS published its first case study in 1921, and today, the college develops approximately 350 cases each year and sells 6,000,000 cases for use in business courses across the world. Although case studies have clearly evolved into powerful and critical components of professional programs in business, medical, law, and military schools, they remain less utilized in modern engineering education. Incorporating the case method throughout a professional curriculum exposes students to a variety of practical situations applicable to their field of study. For example, a typical business student studies up to 500 cases in an MBA program. Case studies provide insights into the approach used by practicing professionals to resolve real-world issues and have a tendency to empower young graduates with a sense of deja vu when they encounter similar situations in the real-world. Such simulated experiential learning is a major component of most professional programs and can fill a critical need in the education of today’s environmental engineers. Case studies are not merely a professor’s stories. They utilize synthesis of knowledge and applied problem solving to illustrate how engineering works in a societal context, and they can serve as highly effective learning tools for preparing a modern environmental engineering workforce. An engineering case program was initiated at Stanford University in 1964 with help from the National Science Foundation and was later adopted by the American Society of Engineering Education ~ASEE!. Today, the program continues under the umbrella of ASEE and houses an Engineering Case Library jointly maintained by the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and Carleton University ~ECL 2005!. Perhaps due to its large scope, this resource remains regretfully underutilized by environmental engineering faculty. The Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors ~AEESP! has recently circulated a call for case studies and proposed compiling environmental engineering cases for instructional use by engineering educators. If successful, this effort by AEESP may be a modest establishment of a resource analogous to HBS’s library of business case studies. Kardos and Smith ~1979! described an engineering case as the narration of a “series of events, which reflects an engineering