Evaluation Of Sustainable Engineering Education Via Service Learning And Community Service Efforts

Sustainable engineering considers the potential environmental, health, economic, and social impacts in conceiving, developing, and constructing products or systems. Sustainable engineering technologies that emerge are designed to meet the current needs of a client or community and to endure anticipated future challenges. Sustainable engineering education is critical in moving towards the paradigm of a sustainable world. For students to discern the impact of engineering decisions on multiple levels requires a unique pedagogical approach; sustainable engineering education will enable them to implement holistic problem-solving methods and deliver sustainable solutions. Although sustainable engineering programs are proliferating in engineering education, there is little supporting evidence regarding the quality of these learning experiences. One approach, sustainable engineering through service learning, appears to have pedagogical advantages, but has yet to be rigorously explored. This paper outlines an approach to evaluate if such an advantage exists. Our goal is to determine if (and how) service learning provides an appropriate method to instill sustainable engineering educational outcomes in engineering students. Service learning has been shown to enrich students’ learning experiences and to be intrinsically motivational to engineering students. Consequently, we are evaluating the outcomes resulting from the explicit integration of sustainable engineering and service learning in engineering education. Sustainable engineering via service learning efforts, both curricular and extracurricular, are being practiced in civil and environmental engineering programs at many institutions. In this research detailed analyses will examine efforts at Tufts University, the University of Colorado-Boulder and Michigan Technological University. Our assessment will utilize existing qualitative and quantitative tools that measure knowledge and skills of, and attitudes towards, sustainable engineering concepts of participating engineering students. The research design will use mixed methods in a quasi-experimental, change-over-time approach. Match comparison control groups will consist of engineering students not involved in these service learning activities. From the collected data, we will establish a “Best Practices” framework to provide insight on the benefits, resources, and adoption of sustainable engineering via service learning. Background: Need for Sustainable Engineering Over the last few years, recognition of the need to shift the engineering education paradigm has escalated, fueled by a palpable sense of urgency. In response, professional organizations, industry executives, and faculty members have addressed the need for reform by prescribing the necessary skills and attributes with which engineers must be equipped to overcome future challenges 1, 2 . To identify the necessary skill sets and align them with accreditation criteria, the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) sought guidance from a group of proactive industry leaders, all member of their Industry Advisory Council (IAC). The ABET P ge 15543.2 IAC made it clear that sustainable development was becoming the dominant economic, environmental, and social issue of the 21 st century, and that “a fundamental change in engineering education was required to help the next generation of engineers design for sustainable development and long-range competitiveness” 3,4 . The IAC most notably placed emphasis on “teamwork and an interdisciplinary understanding of the societal, ecological, financial, national, and global impacts of engineering” 5 . These attributes, among others, formed the foundation for ABET Engineering Criteria 2000 (EC 2000) was geared towards students’ abilities “to design...to meet desired needs within realistic constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability, and sustainability...to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context” 6 . Many other organizations continually advocated this “educational reformation”. The American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) Code of Ethics requires civil engineers to “strive to comply with the principles of sustainable development in the performance of their professional duties ...[including] global leadership in the promotion of responsible, economically sound, and environmentally sustainable solutions that enhance the quality of life, protect and efficiently use natural resources” 7 . Concurrently, the National Academy of Engineers (NAE) 1, 8 created the Technology and Sustainable Development program, aimed at illuminating the relationship between ecology, economic growth, and the environment. In 1994, the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) issued a statement recommending that “Engineering students should learn about sustainable development and sustainability in the general education component of the curriculum as they are preparing for the major design experience” 9,10 . The basis for these calls for “reformation” can be traced to Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report, issued by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) in 1987. The Brundtland Report alerted the world to the urgency of making progress towards economic development that could be sustained without depleting natural resources or harming the environment. The definition of sustainable development appearing in the Brundtland Report soon became ubiquitous. According to the WCED, sustainable development is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” 11 . Furthermore, the report identified the three pillars of sustainability as environment, economy, and society, signifying that together, they form a complex system of interdependent components. The core of the new engineering education paradigm is the belief that the solutions to current and future problems must consider the human dimension and that technological solutions must consider the social, political, environmental, and economic dynamics of the systems on a global scale. The underlying theme in education reform must be preparation to address global problems in sustainable ways. To meet future challenges, educators need to shift engineering pedagogies to help students learn a more all-encompassing, human-centered, problem-solving approach. As a group of faculty from several universities stated, “A long-term goal of 21st century engineering education is to enable practicing engineers to incorporate tenets of sustainability into all phases of their practice, so that “sustainable engineering” eventually equates with “good engineering” 12 . The key challenge in engineering curricula is not to completely revamp the current program, but to “imbue the education of engineering students with the contingent nature of engineering solutions” 13 . P ge 15543.3