Supporting sustainable design through holistic situated learning: A case study in transdisciplinarity.

In 2017, a visioning committee of the National Academies of Engineering (U.S.) advocated transdisciplinary design for its potential to address complex societal needs. Lang et al. suggest design principles for this modality while calling for additional contributions to enrich our practice. This paper offers insights from a 10-week case study at a permaculture research site for which the lay partners report deep satisfaction and the four student participants, all female engineering undergraduates, reported transformational outcomes that support sustainable design. Some of the emergent outcomes include: Understanding engineering to be a sacred act of service, where one's actions directly affect living beings; Seeing the direct connection of one's every action to the surrounding planetary life; Experiencing a collaborative design partnership with the hosts, where the power of decision-making was shared, and solutions were co-created. Students also reported greater agency as developing engineers, authentic conflict resolution and a substantial increase in personal well-being. They reported being exhausted from their on-site projects in a way that was joyful, meaningful, and life-giving, which they contrasted with normal, academic exhaustion. The results suggest that intentionally structured, situated learning modalities can be powerful and effective for manifesting transformative outcomes in support of sustainable design. In this paper, we unpack the case study and its holistic design foundations. We also posit a theory to account for its outcomes that can guide others who would like to test these ideas in other settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]