Abstract
Sustainability and sustainable development are cornerstones of many of the greatest challenges that engineering faces in the 21st century. Yet, most engineering programs do not explicitly prepare students to engineer within the bounds of sustainability. While engineering education must change in order to more fully integrate sustainability, such change should leverage intersections among what engineering students bring to the table, how engineering educators teach, and the sustainability challenges defined by experts in engineering. This study focuses specifically on what students are bringing to the table by first comparing what students intend to contribute to a more sustainable world to what they should contribute as defined by the grand challenges of engineering. Qualitative analyses of what students say about how they intend to contribute to sustainability show that these statements cover only a small subset of the grand challenges. Additional quantitative analyses show that more engineering students than students in non-STEM fields (business and education) have a strong sense of personal responsibility regarding critical sustainability issues in sustainable energy and waste management. These results suggest that, with proper intervention from engineering educators, engineering students are well positioned and motivated to pursue and expand their sense of responsibility for sustainability.
Highlights
The United Nations made sustainable development a global priority with Agenda 21 during the 1992 Earth Summit and most recently with Agenda 2030 and its sustainable development goals [1]
Do engineering students expect to contribute to sustainability in ways that are consistent with national priorities for engineering? The overlap between Agenda 2030 Sustainability Goals (SDGs) [1] and the grand challenges of engineering [2] reflects the theme of sustainability that the National Academy of Engineering has emphasized and folded into these challenges (Figure 1)
Do students in various (STEM and non-STEM) majors express a different sense of personal responsibility for specific challenges in sustainability? Not surprisingly, this study found that a greater percentage of STEM students feel responsible for addressing sustainability challenges that directly relate to science and technology
Summary
The United Nations made sustainable development a global priority with Agenda 21 during the 1992 Earth Summit and most recently with Agenda 2030 and its sustainable development goals [1]. Engineering educators are tasked with advancing a major shift in mindset from controlling nature to participating with nature and doing so in such a way that synergistically improves both human life and environment [3] In support of this paradigm shift, the NAE, with input from technology experts around the world, defined 14 grand challenges of engineering based on four cross-cutting themes which include sustainability [2]. Several of these grand challenges focus on a traditional single-pillar, environmentally focused view of sustainability (e.g., develop carbon sequestration methods, manage the nitrogen cycle). Other challenges focus on the cross-cutting influence of education (e.g., advance personalized learning) in supporting a more sustainable future alongside environmental, social, and economic dimensions
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