An Innovative Way to Teach Sustainability in Civil Engineering Material Class

Sustainability concepts were introduced into the Civil Engineering Materials course at Manhattan College by requiring students to design their own “Greencrete” using recycled materials for their term project. Students were allowed considerable freedom in choosing the recycled materials, and were challenged to predict the strength of the “Greencrete” they developed. In addition to introducing students to sustainability concepts, the project developed their creativity and critical thinking skills, enabled them to learn concrete design concepts more thoroughly, and provided a challenging yet fun learning environment that they enjoyed. Introduction Civil engineers are being increasingly expected to develop sustainable solutions to infrastructure and technology problems, yet they may find themselves inadequately prepared to provide answers. 1 In a 2006 study, the rating of new graduates’ knowledge of sustainable principles was only 2.8 out of 10, department support for teaching and research in sustainability was 4.7 out of 10, and the university leadership’s support of sustainability was 3.0 out of 10. 2 A paradigm shift is thus necessary to educate students to recognize sustainability as a changing constraint in engineering. 3 In the past decade, the green building movement has gained momentum and there is a need to equip engineering students with a wider knowledge base in terms of environmental, economic, and social attributes of engineered systems, works, and materials. Students not only need an understanding of sustainability to make significant engineering decisions, they also need the critical thinking skills and creativity to supply effective solutions to complex technical problems. 4 In this context, an active learning environment—including problem-based learning and student designed laboratory experiments oriented around sustainability issues in the civil engineering industry—is useful for students to develop practical skills. 5 Civil Engineering courses should also be developed to encourage students to think outside the “technical” box, 6 work in groups, develop leadership and team building skills, and work in a cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary environment. This sort of cross-disciplinary thinking and skills are important for successful execution of projects related to sustainability. Sustainability is a perspective that can be introduced in early classes and not only as a technical topic to teach at the upper level. Schools such as Carnegie Mellon University, Syracuse University, and Arizona State University have successfully implemented courses in sustainability in civil engineering freshman and sophomore courses. 4-8 Lower level sustainability courses can be related to the knowledge gained in the required math, science, humanities, and social science courses. Incorporating sustainability in the civil engineering curriculum is difficult due to an already full program. Bielefeldt (2011) discusses an alternative approach for incorporating sustainability early on in the curriculum and reports that the awareness of sustainability in subsequent assignments was present even when students were not specifically prompted to include sustainability. 9 Upper level design courses can then be mapped to the sustainability concepts learned in the lower level courses. However, incorporating sustainability in the civil engineering curriculum is often difficult due to an already full program. A way to overcome this constraint is to introduce sustainability concepts P ge 24168.2 into core engineering courses while maintaining the original course objectives. Aurandt and Butler (2011) were successful in introducing sustainability concepts into core engineering courses while maintaining the original course objectives, but noted a general lack of educational materials and learning tools available for this integration of sustainability into the core courses. 10 A course into which sustainability concepts can be readily incorporated is the civil engineering materials course. Course Overview A civil engineering materials course is typically one of the core courses that all civil engineering students take in the spring semester of the sophomore year or fall semester of the junior year. Traditionally this course covers a variety of civil engineering materials, their sources, manufacturing process, and their behavior under different loading conditions. The content of this course is flexible and the course content can be modified to introduce both green and traditional materials and give students the opportunity to compare their behavior. Introduction of green materials in this course need not sacrifice core concepts. Sustainability concepts were introduced to civil engineering student in the Civil Engineering Material course at Manhattan College through an innovative term project dealing with the creative use of recycled materials in concrete.