Collaborative Research: Integrating Sustainability Grand Challenges and Systems Thinking into Engineering Curriculum

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The goal of this TUES Type 2 project is to incorporate sustainability grand challenges and experiential learning into classrooms and throughout engineering programs, with the aim of attracting and retaining a talented and diverse set of students who are prepared to tackle the engineering challenges of a global economy. The project team is developing and implementing three stand-alone sustainability courses and 14 modules at five partner institutions (Arizona State University, Mesa Community College, University of Pittsburgh, Community College of Allegheny College, and Laney College) and evaluating the effectiveness of the modules and classes on student, faculty, and program performance. Specifically, this project (1) creates and (2) implements ready-to-use content for three new stand-alone sustainability courses and fourteen modules, (3) evaluates the effectiveness of each course and module based on student and faculty feedback and performance, (4) evaluates the different degrees of program-wide curricula change: the stand-alone course method and the module method, and (5) disseminates the courses, modules, and findings to other institutions.The stand-alone courses (Life Cycle Assessment, Green Buildings, and Sustainability Topics) and sustainability modules employ experiential learning, which has been shown in educational research to enhance the quality of student learning, and build on the team's sustainability engineering educational expertise. Flexibility is built into the stand-alone course materials and modules to accommodate the resources of different faculty and facilitate the adoption of these courses across different universities. The team is developing engaging activities for students both within the classroom and in the real world and increasing faculty expertise by mentoring numerous faculty over the four-year project. Moreover, the project includes well-integrated activities to address research questions on the effectiveness of the stand-alone courses' and modules' methods for incorporating sustainability topics. Evaluation includes student-centered evaluation of learning outcomes for each module and course, evaluation of faculty and institutional outcomes for the two different methods of course integration, and evaluation of outcomes from the collaborative project. Results are used to create recommendations on how institutions can best integrate sustainability and systems thinking into engineering curricula and to advance the understanding of faculty and institutional barriers to integrating sustainability and experiential learning into curricula.This project creates resources aimed at different engineering courses across the range of undergraduate levels; the program is reaching hundreds of undergraduates at two research universities and three community colleges. This project has the potential to facilitate integration of sustainability education into existing curricula by developing flexible curricular material and identifying and minimizing barriers to implementation of sustainability education and experiential learning. Faculty development workshops and mentoring activities are employed to facilitate dissemination and adoption of the developed courses and module.