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Societal goals have been shifting over the last seventy years towards global sustainability concerns, diversity, and equity. As the goals have shifted, societal demands on engineers and organizations have been shifting. This has implications for how we educate engineers. Sustainable engineering leadership and management consider the organizational aspects of the development and operation of complex designs in a sustainable manner with safety and risk management being key elements of sustainable design, operation, and management of engineering projects. This work explores the intersection of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the current outcomes based engineering education accreditation framework, and risk based process safety management. It further elaborates on how these elements can be integrated into a structured case study approach to connect the role of the underlying values, ethics, assumptions, and beliefs of people who lead, manage, and work in complex engineering projects towards the enactment of a sustainability culture or a safety culture or both. The proposed case study structure reinforces engineering education outcomes, the United Nations sustainable development goals, and Risk Based Process Safety (RBPS) management in order to further develop technical and professional skills in undergraduate and graduate students better preparing them for their future roles in a world demanding sustainable solutions.

PurposeLiterature limited in scope regarding the incorporation of sustainability into engineering curriculum encouraged authors to look at the current approaches of universities to the integration of sustainability into university curricula. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the literature published and analyse the university secondary data (information published on the university websites and magazines and programme catalogues) to understand the current status of Australian universities regarding the integration of sustainability in engineering.Design/methodology/approachArticles and reports from different trustworthy sources have been analysed in this study. A text mining methodology was used to gather information from websites, magazines and programme catalogues.FindingsObtained information and data indicate that the universities are considering sustainability seriously with both internal and external stakeholders of universities working towards embedding sustainability in engineering curricula. Most of the Australian universities have successfully implemented sustainable engineering education and the rest are focussing on integrating sustainability into their engineering education curriculum.Originality/valueThis is the first review, which focusses on incorporating sustainability into the engineering education of Australian universities. However, considering current progress and also some drawbacks of the universities regarding the integration of sustainability into engineering curriculum, 15 future research questions have been developed, which should be considered to make the integration process more efficient and equip engineers who would be able to engage and tackle the environmental, personal, social and economic challenges of the twenty-first century.

Mobility and transnational migration are current social developments among the population of the European Union. These developments in both society-at-large and companies, linked to the challenges of sustainability, lead to new requirements for working in the European Union. Teaching and learning in higher education needs to adapt to these requirements. As a result, new and innovative teaching and learning practices in higher education should provide competencies for transnational teamwork in the curriculum of tomorrow's engineers in order to ensure their competitiveness in the job market. A transnational project-oriented teaching and learning framework, which provides the future key competencies for young engineers was implemented in the course European Engineering Team (EET). Engineering students from four countries participated in a new project-based course that focused on the development of innovative and sustainable products and opportunities. The goal of this paper is to present results and lessons learnt from three cohorts of EET.

Purpose This paper aims to introduce a case-based module teaching sustainable engineering, linking the Envision rating system with behavioral decision science. Three complete modules are publicly available in a repository for any instructor to adapt, use and review. Design/methodology/approach A case study was written about the Tucannon River Wind Farm, a project-certified Gold by the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure’s Envision™ rating system. The case was used as the basis for an in-class PowerPoint module to achieve student learning outcomes related to sustainability. Findings Before and after surveys showed significant (p < 0.05) learning increases. Word clouds show changes in student perceptions of sustainable design. Rubric scoring of writing assignments and concept maps yielded valuable insights and improvements and demonstrated the overall validity of the module approach. Research limitations/implications Modules lasting only one or two class days must be well-integrated into courses and curricula to promote greater learning value. Concept mapping may be a useful addition but involves a learning curve for both instructors and students. Practical implications By offering instructors access to a set of case-based modules, it becomes more practical for them to teach about sustainable infrastructure and decision-making. Social implications The module exemplifies a project owner and an engineering firm strongly committed to social and environmental sustainability. Envision’s Quality of Life and Leadership categories emphasize community well-being, involvement and collaboration. Originality/value This module offers a unique transdisciplinary focus meeting several needs in engineering education on sustainability, complex problems and decision-making.

Purpose Sustainable manufacturing may be defined as the creation of manufactured products that use processes that are non-polluting, conserve energy and natural resources, and are economically sound and safe for employees, communities and consumers. Recently, there have been several industrial and governmental endeavors to launch sustainable manufacturing initiatives. To support such initiatives and to prepare the next generation of scientists and engineers, academic institutions have a responsibility to introduce educational programs and tools in the area of sustainable manufacturing. The purpose of this paper is to report on the approach, progress and contributions of a US National Science Foundation-sponsored project titled: “The Sustainable Manufacturing Advances in Research and Technology Coordination Network (SMART CN)”. Design/methodology/approach The project aims to bridge the gap between the academic knowledge discovery and industrial technology innovation for sustainable manufacturing. Toward this goal, various research and educational activities have been undertaken to introduce Sustainable Manufacturing Case Studies for use by academic instructors to a diverse group of undergraduate, graduate and industry professionals. Findings In this paper, the need for education on sustainable manufacturing has been focused upon, followed by approaches toward addressing these needs, concluding with examples of case studies developed through the SMART-CN project framework. Originality/value This work provides the engineering community with structured modules for introducing the topic of sustainable manufacturing in the curriculum.

Purpose This paper aims to identify patterns and trends taking place in engineering education in sustainability, through analyzing the evolution of research conducted in relevant publications in the field of engineering education for sustainability in the past decades. Design/methodology/approach First, a bibliometric approach has been applied, adopting a co-word analysis based on co-occurrence of the keywords (300 items) in articles from three indexed journals related to engineering, education or sustainability. The selection of the articles has been based on the appearance of the previous three terms in the topic and title fields of the journal, where journal scope (based in the categories of the InCites Journal Citation Reports) covered at least two topics, and the third topic was applied in the search, as follows: International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education – Scope of the journal: sustainability and education, Keyword search: engineering (20 papers); Journal of Cleaner Production – Scope of the journal: sustainability and engineering, Keyword search: education (122 papers); International Journal of Engineering Education – Scope of the journal: engineering and education, Keyword search: sustainability (29 papers); Second, to identify topological patterns and their evolution, a structural and temporal analysis of the network of keywords and a categorization of the keywords in thematic clusters (named categories) have been performed. Findings The most relevant categories in terms of corresponding number of keywords, even though these have decreased in recent years, are those related with institutional and policy aspects to embedding or applying sustainability in higher education. At the same time, categories related to the professional development of faculty members, implementation and use of learning strategies (i.e. real-world learning experiences, educational innovative initiatives/tools/techniques) and cross-boundary schemes (i.e. transdisciplinarity, ethics, networking, etc.) increase their relevance in the past five years, signaling some of the challenging fields of interest in engineering higher education in sustainability in the near future. Practical implications Knowledge of the trends in devising sustainability education in engineering allows for designing curricular schemes and learning strategies to achieve competences, which are key factors for the change toward sustainability. Originality/value This research has a strong strategic value, as it indicates the focus of future research efforts and networking on some of the topics of greatest concern in engineering higher education for sustainability.

Purpose – The purpose of this study was to design an assessment instrument to evaluate students’ attitudes toward sustainable engineering (SE). Factors that impact SE beliefs could then be explored. Design/methodology/approach – Using the definition of sustainability from the Brundtland report and expectancy value theory, students’ sentiment toward SE was evaluated using items to assess SE self-efficacy, SE value and SE affect. The survey was distributed at three diverse universities with 515 responses from students ranging from first year through graduate studies in a variety of engineering majors. The survey instrument was validated using principal components analysis, and internal reliability was established via high Cronbach’s alpha for each construct. Findings – Participation in more experiential, enriching learning experiences correlated to higher SE self-efficacy, value and affect. Extracurricular club involvement correlated with a lower self-efficacy but high SE value. Students who had participated in undergraduate research had a high SE self-efficacy, particularly in the environmental and social sub-scales. The students who participated in internships had high SE self-efficacy but lower SE affect. A greater number of volunteer hours correlated with increased SE affect. Female students possessed higher SE value and affect than male students, but self-efficacy was not significantly different. SE self-efficacy increased with academic rank. Originality/value – This is the first effort to measure engineering students’ attitudes toward SE using the three sub-scales of expectancy value theory and assessing correlations in these attributes with students’ participation in various learning experiences.

Sustainability issues are widely recognized as wicked problems, which should not be considered as problems to be solved, but as conditions to be governed. There is a general agreement on the need to reform scientific expertise as it is required to deal with sustainability challenges, by developing new ways of knowledge production and decision-making. Transdisciplinary aspects of sustainability are widely acknowledged as a transformational stream of sustainability science. However, when entering transdisciplinarity, also encompassing social sciences and humanities, engineering researchers enter unfamiliar grounds. Advancing sustainable engineering science requires creating new long-term, participatory, solution-oriented programs as platforms to recognize and engage with the macro-ethical, adaptive, and cross-disciplinary challenges embedded in professional issues. Furthermore, the difficulties to change engineering education are broadly analyzed: anachronistic pedagogy, mismatched incentives, insufficient expertise, lack of personal commitment, familiar and comfortable patterns for scholars, overcrowded curriculum, etc. Nevertheless, in spite of any old pattern, operationalizing the goals of the field, developing the necessary competencies, and seeking partnerships between society and the academy will position academic institutions to impact on the transition towards sustainability. We have performed a literature review on different ways of applying or bringing transdisciplinarity approach to higher education, in particular in engineering and technology fields. Deepening the argumentation provided by Julie T. Klein on the three discourses on transdisciplinarity -transcendence, problem solving, transgression- we have analysed the different published initiatives under those discourses to approach transdisciplinarity initiatives in engineering education for sustainability

Sustainability issues are widely recognized as wicked problems, which should not be considered as problems to be solved, but as conditions to be governed. There is a general agreement on the need to reform scientific expertise as it is required to deal with sustainability challenges, by developing new ways of knowledge production and decision-making. Transdisciplinary aspects of sustainability are widely acknowledged as a transformational stream of sustainability science. However, when entering transdisciplinarity, also encompassing social sciences and humanities, engineering researchers enter unfamiliar grounds. Advancing sustainable engineering science requires creating new long-term, participatory, solution-oriented programs as platforms to recognize and engage with the macro-ethical, adaptive, and cross-disciplinary challenges embedded in professional issues. Furthermore, the difficulties to change engineering education are broadly analyzed: anachronistic pedagogy, mismatched incentives, insufficient expertise, lack of personal commitment, familiar and comfortable patterns for scholars, overcrowded curriculum, etc. Nevertheless, in spite of any old pattern, operationalizing the goals of the field, developing the necessary competencies, and seeking partnerships between society and the academy will position academic institutions to impact on the transition towards sustainability. We have performed a literature review on different ways of applying or bringing transdisciplinarity approach to higher education, in particular in engineering and technology fields. Deepening the argumentation provided by Julie T. Klein on the three discourses on transdisciplinarity -transcendence, problem solving, transgression- we have analysed the different published initiatives under those discourses to approach transdisciplinarity initiatives in engineering education for sustainability