Long-term Impact on Environmental Attitudes and Knowledge Assessed over Three Semesters of an Environmental Engineering Sequence

The pedagogy employed in a three-course environmental engineering sequence is investigated to determine the efficacy of enabling long-term improvement of knowledge and attitudes toward the environment. These three courses incorporate concepts of the five grand challenges released by the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences and increase the breadth of knowledge for T-professionals. Previous studies of lengths from a few weeks to semester long courses evaluated the potential causality among various demographics and environmental knowledge and attitudes. The research presented herein contrasts and compares changes in environmental knowledge based upon a 12-question survey and changes in environmental attitude based upon a seven-question survey administered at the beginning and end of the environmental engineering sequence courses taught to over 200 students from a variety of disciplines. Survey results demonstrate that a positive increase (9.27%) in knowledge occurred from the start to the end of the first course and the elimination of statistical differences among numerous demographics such as sex and race. After 18 months of environmental education, an 8.6% increase in knowledge was retained compared to the initial knowledge where the female and non-white demographics increased the most but retained the least. Results regarding environmental attitudes suggest that a focus on learning about environmental issues decreased positive attitudes toward the environment, whereas focusing on solutions to environmental issues increased positive attitudes toward the environment. Evaluating changes or sustainment of improved environmental attitudes over three semesters demonstrates the potential for an environmental engineering education to have a multi-year impact on the values and environmental ethos of students across many disciplines. Background and Introduction The environmental problems of today have recently been organized into the five grand challenges released by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in “Environmental Engineering for the 21 Century: Addressing Grand Challenges” [1]. The five grand challenges are (1) sustainably supply food, water, and energy; (2) curb climate change and adapt to its impacts; (3) design a future without pollution and waste; (4) create efficient, healthy, resilient cities; and (5) foster informed decisions and actions [1]. These grand challenges align with the issues presented and discussed in the Engineer of 2020 [2] and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [3]. The Engineer of 2020 called for engineers to not only be technical experts but be leaders in business and government to help build a more sustainable future [2]. The SDGs seek to transform our world by increasing the environmental and social equality of the developing world through sustainable, multidisciplinary innovation [3]. Many of the world’s leading industries take social, economic, and environmental impacts of their work into consideration. This is evident in the triple bottom line approach, referred to with the three P’s of people, planet, and profit [4], [5]. Incorporating environmental, economic, and social responsibility into a profitable business requires multidisciplinary teams with diverse competencies. Professionals who not only have a great depth of knowledge in their field, but also broad experiences in other fields, will thrive best in this multidisciplinary team setting [6]. One illustrative and helpful model that industry has embraced is the idea of a T-professional [6]. T-professionals acquire a breadth of multidisciplinary experiences as well as disciplinary depth. This is accomplished by developing competencies that span all professions, including teamwork, communication, and critical thinking, while simultaneously gaining exposure to many disciplines and systems [6]. Finally, T-professionals achieve disciplinary depth, while retaining the ability to interact with the broader competencies to which they were exposed [6]. They can then use this diverse experience and knowledge to interact with others in different disciplines [6]. Engineering programs at universities have begun to adopt this concept more specifically as the T-shaped engineer, enabling technical professionals to better interact with a variety of stakeholders, such as lawyers, scientists, decisionmakers, politicians, and other engineering professionals [7]. We have applied this model to develop the “T-shaped professional” which we define as a non-engineer professional with technical engineering experience (breadth) to complement their disciplinary depth. Previous studies have looked at how knowledge and attitudes toward the environment have changed based on the educational experiences of students. Prior research has included the effects of high school students taking a dedicated 10-day environmental course [8] and undergraduate students within a variety of educational experiences [9], [10]. One study evaluated the impact of a dedicated, semester long environmental course on the attitudes and knowledge of students from diverse backgrounds [11]. In that study, Martinez found that taking a semester long environmental course enabled previous demographic differences in students’ knowledge and attitudes to become statistically similar, resulting in improved knowledge across all demographics as well as increases in environmentally conscious attitudes [11]. Previously, the diversity metrics evaluated by Martinez had been investigated separately, including student age [9], hometown [12], [13], major [13], [14], and parents’ education [15]. Another study looked at the same changes in attitudes through a second environmental course that focused on environmental engineering design in the developed world [16]. In that study, Plante found no statistical decrease in environmentally-friendly attitudes of the students after the second semester of the environmental engineering sequence course, despite the transition for non-engineering majors from a science-focused course to a math-focused course. While this was certainly desired, it was surprising because non-engineering majors were anecdotally much less comfortable in the second course (EV350) [17] of the sequence than in the first course (EV300)