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Sustainability as a multidisciplinary concept has been introduced and developed for over twenty years, and its principles have been well recognized by engineering professionals, especially in environmental-related fields. However, it remains challenging for most engineering educators to engage students with such a concept in their traditional technical courses. It is even more challenging to prepare students for integrating the sustainability principles into their engineering design process since it requires knowledge, training and practice. In our engineering program, senior engineering students are required to prepare their senior design proposals in a fall semester and complete the project in the following spring semester. The topics of senior design projects are chosen by students, not professors. Since last year, each team is required to evaluate the project from a sustainability point of view in the final report. Accordingly, a new approach is proposed in this paper to enhance students' understanding of sustainable engineering design principles and to help them synthesize sustainability concepts already introduced in previous courses. This new process starts right after the students select the project topic and form in teams. A six-factor table proposed by Pawley et al. is introduced to the students. This framework is used to evaluate an engineering project at the early stage on six factors, i.e. systems, time, energy, modeling, people and scale. Each team uses the framework as an anchor to identify the sustainability related opportunities and potential issues with the topic the team selects. Then an integrated sustainable engineering design process is adopted which includes eight more tasks in addition to the thirteen tasks required in a traditional engineering design process. Consequently, each team is required to develop a sustainable engineering design flowchart that specifically ties to the team project. For an assessment purpose, pre- and post- anonymous student surveys are developed and implemented. The results on Likert-scale and multiple choice questions are analyzed and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A framework for an active learning summer program for middle school students is presented along with survey instruments and pre and post program data regarding student attitudes and awareness of sustainable design issues and career motivation in the field. This summer program was designed to attract students, especially from underrepresented groups, into early motivating experiences in the engineering fields and to increase their awareness of concepts and careers in renewable energy, and green engineering design principles and technologies. Twenty-four middle school students from a low social economic school district were provided the opportunity to experience many state-of-the-art engineering technologies at the university's school of engineering and to learn from a diverse group of knowledgeable mentoring faculty. In the week - long program, students were involved in hands-on engineering and renewable energy activities appropriate to their age and knowledge. Topics covered included: the engineering design process, CAD solid modeling, 3D printing and water jet cutting, hands-on assembly, renewable energy resources for homes, sustainable site selection, and water efficiency principles. Using project- based learning, student teams participated as designers of their own green home models by integrating their learning of renewable energy use, conservation practices, and appropriate design and material selection. Pre and post surveys revealed increases in student awareness of general engineering and renewable energy concepts as well as increased interest in pursuing engineering careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental and sustainability problems are not purely technical problems. Many of the most pressing issues, such as climate change, resource scarcity, and pollution, require holistic approaches that go beyond technical systems analysis and optimization. Such problems have been called wicked sustainability problems (WSPs) because they are highly complex, contested, and lack definite solutions1,2. Engineering education has the potential to play an important role in preparing students to contribute to deal with problems such as WSPs3,4. To be able to contribute in this way, students need to develop an ability to holistically and integratively understand and address WSPs while considering the normative context of sustainable development (here called WSP literacy). However, common practice in engineering education more commonly prepares students to address well-structured and tame rather than wicked problems5,6. One reason may be that working together to develop complex competencies such as WSP literacy is challenging for students as well as educators. Wiek, Withycombe, and Redman suggest that formulating and operationalizing intended learning outcomes (ILOs) for complex competencies can facilitate this difficult process and thus improve engineering education practice4. In this paper, we provide a preliminary matrix of 22 concrete ILOs for WSP literacy, as well as two different approaches to assessing (some of) them in engineering education. We expect that engineering educators will find these ILOs and assessment strategies valuable for adopting a constructive alignment approach for WSP literacy in their teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]