Impact of Household Location on First‐Year Engineering Students' Environmental Awareness and Resistance to Change

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundTo prepare engineers for their future roles, responsibilities, and professional demands, undergraduate engineering programs must integrate sustainable design into their curricula. Hence, we need to understand engineering students' awareness, conceptions, and, particularly, their prior knowledge and what shaped it.PurposeThis study proposed to examine the impact of their home location on engineering students' environmental awareness and resistance to change.Design/MethodWe administered two environmental surveys to students in a first‐year undergraduate engineering program. First, a macrolevel analysis focused on differences between students from different U.S. regions and international students. Then, to examine differences hypothesized in our environmental awareness model at the zip code‐level (students' household location, i.e., location from which they applied to college), we focused on first‐year engineering students with Indiana zip codes (n = 1,367).ResultsSignificant differences appeared in environmental awareness and knowledge according to students' household location (U.S. regions and international). As a result, we created a predictive model of the students' environmental knowledge, awareness, attitudes, and resistance to change using a GIS location‐based model.ConclusionsThis study extends the existing literature and provides a starting point for further exploring these relationships with engineering students. Since engineering programs provide different experiences to students, this study cautiously supports the idea that student household location has an impact and should be considered a viable variable. Further work is necessary to study the impact of location‐based class projects on the students' awareness and knowledge about sustainability and environmental issues.