Scaffolding curricula in chemical engineering degree programs in order to develop student’s awareness of sustainability

Abstract

Global challenges of climate change, resource scarcity, inequality and anthropogenic pollution make a chemical engineering student’s “awareness of sustainability” an important competency to develop. However, embedding sustainability curricula into chemical engineering programs remains a difficult task, often viewed by academics through the prism of new curricula fighting for a place in an already tightly-packed traditional degree program. Thus it has typically been relegated to the peripheries of chemical engineering education, via electives or piecemeal efforts in the knowledge domain. For the past 10 years James Cook University’s Chemical engineering program has been designing and implementing curricula to produce graduates with an “awareness of sustainability”. New sustainability-related assessment and sustainability-associated learning outcomes have been created and embedded across all year levels in the UG degree program, including integration into traditional curricula. Emphasis in this paper is placed on describing the sequence of learning outcomes that facilitate scaffolding of student learning in the area of sustainability. Examples from the first and second years of the degree are provided in order to highlight the foundational knowledge and skills that underpin an awareness of sustainability. The extension of these knowledge and skills into open-ended and problem-based learning exercises such as the capstone design project in fourth year is explained. Examples of sustainability-related assessment from JCU’s capstone subject are presented in order to illustrate how students demonstrate competency in this area.