Evaluation of Student Perceptions of Sustainability in Design: A Pilot Study

It has been the consensus in the engineering community that sustainability and sustainable design need to be a part of an engineer’s education for last two decades. Multiple approaches have been investigated in terms of effectively integrating relevant contents and improving students’ understanding. Examples include: offering technical electives (such as renewable energy, environmental impacts, etc.), establishing new concentrations focusing on sustainability issues, and integrating sustainable design throughout the curricula. However, effectively comprehending sustainable design requires understanding multiple issues from a technical, social, environmental, and economic perspective. Moreover, existing studies show that the students’ background knowledge on sustainability varies widely depending on their experience and major concentration. It remains challenging to integrate the contents of sustainability and sustainable design into currently packed engineering curricula. Due to upcoming changes in The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) criterion, sustainability will effectively become a measurable outcome for engineering programs seeking ABET accreditation. This paper outlines a pilot study performed at The College of New Jersey to establish baseline data of students’ perception of sustainable design at the freshman and senior levels. The study also examines effects of in-class learning activities on students’ perception. Pre and post surveys were used for collecting data. The pre-exercise surveys were answered by students at both freshmen and senior levels majoring in Mechanical and Civil engineering. The results of this survey were used to establish the effects the current curriculum has on the student’s conception of sustainability. They showed that there was rather small change in the student’s perception comparing the freshman group and the senior group. Subsequently, in-class activities were performed with the freshman mechanical engineers and the senior civil engineers. A post survey was then administered to evaluate changes in perception. The results from the post survey showed that a single in-class activity can only generate some changes related to the discussed topics and little change in perception as whole. Systematic approaches for integrating the contents of sustainability and sustainable design are necessary to address the revised ABET criterion.