A Sustainability Toolbox for Engineers: Exploring How Students Are Likely to Engage in Sustainability Education

We report on preliminary results regarding the views that engineering undergraduates report concerning technology and sustainability. Specifically, we look at what engineering students believe sustainable technology means and whether they believe sustainability is a realistic possibility for technology development. Results from nine interviews and three focus groups with juniors and seniors in multiple engineering majors are analyzed from the lens of what sustainability means and how readily it may be achievable in the context of technology and technology development. Consistent with results from other studies, we find that students often discuss product lifetime and recycling when considering sustainability through the lens of engineering and technology. However, in the interview setting, students also add dimensions of decreased materials usage, reduced energy consumption, and diminished toxicity of materials as essential to enabling technology and its future development to be sustainable. While most student input regarding sustainability is specific to the engineering attributes of technology, some student remarks do touch on more generalized definitions of sustainability that extend beyond the boundaries of the physical technology itself. Regardless of what sustainability in technology means to students, most interview participants reported creative solutions for gaining ground against profit motives in high tech corporate culture and practice. These results help to lay groundwork for understanding, as teachers of sustainability, how to better connect to the student experience and engage students in meaningful and lasting considerations of sustainability in their coursework.