Evolution Of A Sustainability Focused First Year Environmental Engineering Course

This paper presents ideas on methods to introduce sustainability to first year engineering students. The first year environmental engineering course that all majors are required to take at the University of Colorado at Boulder was modified in fall 2009 to emphasize sustainability. An understanding of sustainability is an important foundation for all engineering students. In addition, it was hypothesized that emphasizing sustainability and the global impacts of environmental engineering would be interesting and motivational to students. At the start of the second lecture in the course, students were given a 12-question in-class survey on sustainability. Students also responded to in-class questions during the two sustainability lectures in real time using a Course Response System (clickers). The new assignment specifically on sustainability required the students to read the Royal Academy of Engineering’s “Engineering for Sustainable Development” report and part of the “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” document. The second new assignment required the students to assess and compare different biofuel options based on journal articles that had conducted life cycle assessments (LCA). This assignment proved particularly challenging for the students. The reflective essays that students wrote in the final assignment of the semester indicated that the new course content successfully raised their awareness of sustainability. However, modifications to the assignments are planned.