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Sustainability in civil engineering education: Why, what, when, where and how
Abstract
Drawing on 12 years of experience in leading engineering programmes for sustainability in a UK university, the authors take a wide view of the broad range of skills young civil engineers need to deliver more effectively the projects they are involved in. These include dealing with complexity, uncertainty, environmental limits, change, people, trade-offs, other disciplines and whole-life costs. In short, the paper asks:What education does the next generation of civil engineers need to act sustainability inwhat Schon has beenmemorably called 'the swamp' of professional practice? The paper examines the fundamental principles all engineers should be guided by, the optimum points to discuss such issues in engineers' educational formation, howsustainability in the curricula can be linked to civil engineering practice and specific examples of teaching strategies and pedagogies that the authors have found to be effective. A brief reviewof UK and international best practice in demonstrating the progress that has already been made towards these goals is also presented.
... Such an approach also has the benefit of facilitating contact between group individuals at the beginning of a programme or course. An important aspect to understanding the broader context in which engineering solutions must be delivered is to create an emotional attachment to the outcome of the decision (Fenner et al., 2014). Experiencing something of the (perhaps irrational) passion displayed when decision stakes are high over an issue relating to a large infrastructure project, for example, can enable students to have more empathy towards real stakeholders. ...
... ortunities for students to experience complexity and abstract issues of sustainability and conclude there is scope for improvement in terms of the holistic approach (covering the environmental, societal and economic dimensions of sustainable development), construction of knowledge, negotiating of conflicting values and promotion of problem solving. Fenner et al. (2014) describe how games can be used as an important component of creating a mindset change in young professional engineers. ...
Games have been used at the Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden) and the University of Cambridge (UK) to aid the teaching of sustainable development to diverse groups of engineering students. This paper explores how games have helped students at two institutions to reflect on issues from different perspectives. More specifically, the work addresses whether games helped to stimulate students’ learning of facts; student reflections; and student peer discussions. The games evaluated include: Building Futures; Democracy; Dilemma; Fishbanks; GaSuCo; Power Grid; and Puerto Mauricio. Methodologies used include: student surveys; deep interviews; group interviews; and essays, written assignments and tests. The main findings are that games contribute strongly to the learning of sustainability and improve critical reflection as well as facilitate interpersonal communication.
... Despite this national and international consensus, most engineering education today does not adequately prepare students to contribute to sustainability (Fenner, Cruickshank, & Ainger, 2014;Lundqvist & Svanström, 2008;The EESD Observatory, 2009;Thompson, 2002). For example, engineering students often do not learn how to address complex and ill-structured sustainability problems such as those mentioned in the Agenda 21 (Seager, Selinger, & Wiek, 2012). ...
Purpose
Considering the relevance of education for sustainable development (SD) to enhancing engineers’ abilities to contribute towards sustainability-related issues, this study aims to help understand the global context of the insertion of SD into engineering education and to provide guidelines to further evolve research and efforts towards implementing Engineering Education for Sustainable Development (EESD).
Design/methodology/approach
This study performed a longitudinal analysis using bibliometrics and a content analysis via Conceive–Design–Implement–Operate standards. SciMAT software was used to support the bibliometric analysis.
Findings
In addition to an increase in the practical aspects presented due to a change in the approaches taken to examine key topics, evidence on important concepts such as “life cycle assessment” and “digitalisation” increased in more recent years. However, it was possible to show that, despite the evolution observed throughout the years, several important opportunities exist for engineering programmes to improve and, for researchers, to fill the related gaps in the research.
Originality/value
This study can be used as a guide for future research and as a source of insights for EESD implementation and improvement.
There is currently great interest in the creation of sustainable and liveable cities, both in the UK and globally. While it can be argued that good progress is being made in thinking about the needs of future cities, meeting these needs and aspirations in practice poses major challenges of understanding and measurement (what is meant by these terms and how can progress towards their achievement be measured?), complexity (cities are complex systems of systems with many interacting parts) and resilience (will interventions made today be relevant and effective in the future?). The Liveable Cities research programme created a systematic decision-making method for improving urban sustainability and liveability: the Liveable Cities Method (LCM). The LCM prioritises four criteria – individual and societal wellbeing, resource security, resource efficiency, and carbon emissions as a proxy for environmental harm (Leach, et al., 2016a) – in an interconnected framework and assesses the need for, and the resilience of, interventions designed to move cities towards improved sustainability and liveability. This paper illustrates the LCM through an example intervention made to the city of Birmingham, UK, and highlights how addressing sustainability and liveability in this way offers unique opportunities for the UK civil engineering profession to lead thinking amongst urban professionals.
The primary objectives of this project were to: (1) identify accredited engineering programs at US institutions that incorporate sustainability concepts into engineering curricula and within these programs characterize the design decision levels being employed and the degree to which information and concepts from non-engineering disciplines are being employed; (2) identify faculty who incorporate sustainability concepts into their research and other activities; (3) map results into a sustainability matrix that captures system complexity and size and the degree to which data and concepts from non-engineering disciplines are being employed; (4) identify best practices for sustainability engineering and leading contributors to sustainability engineering education; and (5) develop a preliminary roadmap with a protocol for a more formal roadmap that will define a path for achieving excellence in sustainability engineering education in the United States.
Knowledge is vital for any society. The well being and robustness of any society is dependent on the acquired knowledge of its components. All of the divine religions attest to this universal tenet. Universities and institutes of higher learning are regarded as centers where knowledge is created, taught, and applied for the benefit of mankind. Knowledge is continuously being developed and updated so that it can enlighten and improve the lives of our global community. Universities are beacons of hope, peace, new ideas and ideals, and exemplary discipline to those who function and enrol in them. They are centers that educate and train future generations of engineers, scientists, technologists, economists, and politicians who will bear the brunt of leading and directing this world of ours into the future. The future is unknown; thus a need for well qualified, realistic, pragmatic, and above all, ethical and moral ‘managers’ who will make the right decisions, so that society's and indeed, mankind's aspirations, goals, and objectives will be achieved and realized. Literature and debate on sustainable development has concentrated mainly on physical and tangible issues and assets: population growth, resource depletion, environmental impact, climate change, poverty, and illiteracy. While the list is not exhaustive, many pundits have failed to realize that the most pressing ingredient and the most scarce resource facing the sustainability concept is not in the physical components of society's endowment, but rather, the ethical and moral values of ‘managers’ – individuals that are entrusted to plan, oversee, and implement a successful economic and social development program that will sustain mankind to live in peace, prosperity, and harmony with this universe. This paper examines this ‘missing link’ in our understanding and application of sustainable development concept. It is argued that universities need to proactively and aggressively ‘infuse’ ethical and moral teachings and values into their respective curricula. It is expected that this infusion will, in due course of time, produce engineers, scientists, and other decision makers who will have a more robust foundation and significance of the missing link, and will, therefore, voluntarily and enthusiastically operate in accordance with sustainable development objectives.
In this paper, an innovative approach for stimulating students to participate in lecture theatre discussions is described. The course module in which this approach was attempted is an introduction to sustainable development, which is a subject that demands a high level of reflection among students for being efficiently learnt. In this case, the module is part of the introduction course for students just beginning their education in mechanical engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. In particular, in this case, the board game GaSuCo (Gaming in Sustainability through Communication) was used at four occasions intermediary to five large-class lectures. The lectures were planned in a way as to invite to a large number of discussions and debates in the theatre, for the purpose of stimulating student reflection. The challenge of having meaningful discussions in a lecture theatre of 160 students is well known and by introducing some of the discussion subjects within the framework of a board game prior to each lecture, most students would have already come across many of the discussion subjects of the lecture on beforehand and tried their arguments on their peers for several of these subjects making the leap to participate in the discussions of a larger group less frightening. The major lessons learnt from having tried this approach for the first time is that lecture theatre discussions are indeed stimulated by the use of board game discussions in between the lectures. Although the effect of the interactive lectures and the board game were strong by their own, it is when the two tools are combined that synergetic effects become evident enhancing the effect even further. Another beneficial effect that was evident is that by being presented to three randomly selected peer students at each board game event, many students that did not know each other before this course module have now got to know each other, facilitating cross-contacts between subgroups within the larger group.
This paper describes the development and implementation of a curriculum for a new level 8 degree in Sustainable Civil Engineering in Ireland. The programme maintains the core outcomes essential for a civil engineering degree, reinforced by programme accreditation, while providing engineering graduates of tomorrow with the new technical and non-technical competencies to become active drivers for sustainable global innovation. The paper outlines how a number of complexities, including limited resources, lower enrolment figures and a changing student demographic were addressed to attract prospective students and provide quality assurance.
The civil and environmental engineering disciplines have identified the levels of knowledge about sustainability that are desirable for students to achieve as they graduate with a bachelor’s degree, as well as sustainability-related competencies to be obtained during a master’s degree, and on-the-job, prior to professional licensure. Different pedagogies are better suited to help students attain these levels of cognitive ability, while also developing affective outcomes. This paper provides examples of different methods that have been used at one institution to educate engineering students about sustainability, supported with data that indicates whether the method successfully achieved the targeted learning outcomes. Lectures, in-class active learning, readings, and appropriately targeted homework assignments can achieve basic sustainability knowledge and comprehension by requiring students to define, identify, and explain aspects of sustainability. Case studies and the application of software tools are good methods to achieve application and analysis competencies. Project-based learning (PBL) and project-based service-learning (PBSL) design projects can reach the synthesis level and may also develop affective outcomes related to sustainability. The results provide examples that may apply to a wider range of disciplines and suggest sustainability outcomes that are particularly difficult to teach and/or assess.
The following discussion is from an Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) prestige lecture based on the original paper and delivered by the authors at the ICE in London on 24 September 2008.1 The event was chaired by Engineering Sustainability editorial panel chair, Professor Chris Rogers from Birmingham University. It was attended by an audience of 130 people as well as being watched by a similar number over a live web-cast. The web-cast can be accessed from the ICE archive for online viewing at http://scenta.interwise.com/etechb/OnDemand/TH6509.
The complex, fragmented and diverse aspects of a sustainable development perspective are translated into an eight-point framework that defines a problem boundary larger than that traditionally adopted by civil engineers. This leads to practical questions intended to inform engineers who ask 'am I being sustainable?' during project implementation. The value of the questions is tested against a case history of a wastewater treatment project. This demonstrates the relevance of the questions to successive project delivery phases of defining the problem, choosing a solution and implementing that solution through design, construction and operation. The case history highlights that answers to several of the additional questions raised by considering this wider problem space are currently buried within government and clients' policies, regulations and standard practice; these answers may not be accessible to the professional engineer.
Purpose
– The purpose of the paper is to examine how a number of key themes are introduced in the Master's programme in Engineering for Sustainable Development, at Cambridge University, through student‐centred activities. These themes include dealing with complexity, uncertainty, change, other disciplines, people, environmental limits, whole life costs, and trade‐offs.
Design/methodology/approach
– The range of exercises and assignments designed to encourage students to test their own assumptions and abilities to develop competencies in these areas are analysed by mapping the key themes onto the formal activities which all students undertake throughout the core MPhil programme. The paper reviews the range of these activities that are designed to help support the formal delivery of the taught programme. These include residential field courses, role plays, change challenges, games, systems thinking, multi criteria decision making, awareness of literature from other disciplines and consultancy projects. An axial coding approach to the analysis of routine feedback questionnaires drawn from recent years has been used to identify how a student's own awareness develops. Also results of two surveys are presented which test the students' perceptions about whether or not the course is providing learning environments to develop awareness and skills in these areas.
Findings
– Students generally perform well against these tasks with a significant feature being the mutual support they give to each other in their learning. The paper concludes that for students from an engineering background it is an holistic approach to delivering a new way of thinking through a combination of lectures, class activities, assignments, interactions between class members, and access to material elsewhere in the University that enables participants to develop their skills in each of the key themes.
Originality/value
– The paper provides a reflection on different pedagogical approaches to exploring key sustainable themes and reports students' own perceptions of the value of these kinds of activities. Experiences are shared of running a range of diverse learning activities within a professional practice Master's programme.
Purpose
The paper seeks to examine the latest stage in a process of change aimed at introducing concepts of sustainable development into the activities of the Department of Engineering at Cambridge University, UK.
Design/methodology/approach
The rationale behind defining the skills which future engineers require is discussed and vehicles for change at both undergraduate and postgraduate level are described. Reflections on the paradigms and pedagogy of teaching sustainable development issues to engineers are offered, as well as notes on barriers to progress which have been encountered.
Findings
The paper observes that the ability to effectively initiate a change process is a vital skill which must be formally developed in those engineers wishing to seek sustainable solutions from within the organisations for which they will work. Lessons are drawn about managing a change process within a large academic department, so that concepts of sustainable development can be effectively introduced across all areas of the engineering curriculum.
Practical implications
A new pedagogy for dealing with changes from the quantitative to the qualitative is required, as the paper questions where the education balance should lie between providing access to technological knowledge which can be applied to designing hard solutions, and training engineers to rethink their fundamental attitudes towards a broader, multiple perspective approach in which problem formulation and context setting play a vital role in reaching consensual solutions.
Originality/value
The paper reviews previously recognised key themes for engineering education for sustainable development, and proposes three further essential ingredients relating to an engineer's ability to engage in problem definition, manage change in organisations, and understand the nature of technical and business innovations.
The introduction of sustainable development (SD) courses into engineering education has been a key goal for many technological universities, accreditation agencies and national and international university networks. This paper presents the results of a 5-year research project that analysed how SD competences were introduced into technological universities. To evaluate which pedagogical approach best facilitates SD learning, ten courses on sustainability from five European technological universities were analysed using conceptual maps as assessment tools. The findings show that:•Students initially perceived sustainability as mainly related to technology, which they consider should be able to resolve the environmental problems of the planet. They saw little relevance in the social and attitudinal aspects of sustainability. This misunderstanding was partially redressed by the course.•Courses that apply a more community-oriented and constructive, active learning pedagogical approach, increase students' knowledge of SD.This paper presents the methodology and results of the research, as well as recommendations for the teaching of SD in technological universities.
This paper discusses the roles of games in experiential learning for sustainability. It includes applied emphases upon four topics: (1) The challenges of sustainable development education with the need for interdisciplinarity, knowledge, skills and attitudinal training and with a special focus upon the urgent needs for paradigm, context and practice changes to help ensure that we make progress toward sustainable societies. We emphasize that these characteristics challenge existing teaching and educational philosophies and methods. (2) The theory of experiential learning, as developed by David Kolb in the nineteen eighties. We underscore that experiential learning is a good model for education for sustainability. (3) The usefulness of games as tools in learning processes. Various aspects of games are discussed such as the ‘functions of games’ and ‘the different categories of games,’ and ‘the role of games in learning and particular in experiential learning.’ These three aspects form the theoretical part of the paper. (4) Brief reviews of some illustrative games. The authors provide practical advice on how to play games in the context of learning for SD. They underscore facets such as the contextualization of games, technical aspects of playing games and the debriefing after the games have been played. The authors conclude the paper with conclusions that games are potentially relevant in all of the four learning phases of experiential learning. Games are especially relevant in phase four. In this phase games can contribute to helping learners to effect shifts in their personal paradigms, context and practice that are needed for sustainable development. The final conclusion is that many games exist and have been proven to be helpful. Educators are invited to change their curricula to facilitate usage of games as integral components of their educational philosophy tools and practice.
Sustainable Development in Practice: Case Studies for Engineers and Scientists, Second Edition explores the concept of sustainable development and its implications for science and engineering. It looks at how sustainability criteria can be combined with traditional scientific and engineering considerations to design and operate industrial systems in a more sustainable manner. Taking a life cycle approach to addressing economic, environmental and social issues, the book presents a series of new practical case studies drawn from a range of sectors, including mining, energy, food, buildings, transport, waste, and health. Written in an accessible style, the book opens with a general introduction to the concept of sustainable development and explores its practical implications for technical experts. Recognising that practical application of sustainable development depends on the context, the second part of the book is devoted to case studies. The case studies explore scientific and technical aspects alongside relevant environmental economic and social issues. The key features of this completely revised and updated second edition include: Twelve new chapters, including the case studies on nuclear energy, biofuels, aviation, buildings, urban transport, food, sanitation and health. Six completely revised chapters, Coverage of a wide range of sustainability issues in both developed and developing countries. Integration of scientific and technical aspects with economic, environmental and social considerations. Discussion of policy implications. Communication with the non-engaging and non-scientific audience. Considered essential reading for all engineers and scientists concerned with sustainable development, Sustainable Development in Practice: Case Studies for Engineers and Scientists, Second Edition also provides key reading and learning materials for undergraduate and postgraduate science and engineering students.
Sustainable Development in Practice: Case Studies for Engineers and Scientists, Second Edition explores the concept of sustainable development and its implications for science and engineering. It looks at how sustainability criteria can be combined with traditional scientific and engineering considerations to design and operate industrial systems in a more sustainable manner. Taking a life cycle approach to addressing economic, environmental and social issues, the book presents a series of new practical case studies drawn from a range of sectors, including mining, energy, food, buildings, transport, waste, and health. Written in an accessible style, the book opens with a general introduction to the concept of sustainable development and explores its practical implications for technical experts. Recognising that practical application of sustainable development depends on the context, the second part of the book is devoted to case studies. The case studies explore scientific and technical aspects alongside relevant environmental economic and social issues. The key features of this completely revised and updated second edition include. Twelve new chapters, including the case studies on nuclear energy, biofuels, aviation, buildings, urban transport, food, sanitation and health. Six completely revised chapters. Coverage of a wide range of sustainability issues in both developed and developing countries. Integration of scientific and technical aspects with economic, environmental and social considerations. Discussion of policy implications. Communication with the non-engaging and non-scientific audience. Considered essential reading for all engineers and scientists concerned with sustainable development, Sustainable Development in Practice: Case Studies for Engineers and Scientists, Second Edition also provides key reading and learning materials for undergraduate and postgraduate science and engineering students.
Much has been made of the importance of training ethical, socially conscious engineers, but does US engineering education actually encourage neophytes to take seriously their professional responsibility to public welfare? Counter to such ideals of engagement, I argue that students' interest in public welfare concerns may actually decline over the course of their engineering education. Using unique longitudinal survey data of students at four colleges, this article examines (a) how students' public welfare beliefs change during their engineering education, (b) whether engineering programs emphasize engagement, and (c) whether these program emphases are related to students' public welfare beliefs. I track four specific public welfare considerations: the importance to students of professional/ethical responsibilities, understanding the consequences of technology, understanding how people use machines, and social consciousness. Suggesting a culture of disengagement, I find that the cultural emphases of students' engineering programs are directly related to their public welfare commitments and students' public welfare concerns decline significantly over the course of their engineering education. However, these findings also suggest that if engineering programs can dismantle the ideological pillars of disengagement in their local climates, they may foster more engaged engineers.
Humanity’s challenge in the 21 st century is to eradicate poverty and achieve prosperity for all within the means of the planet’s limited natural resources. In the run-up to Rio+20, this discussion paper presents a visual framework – shaped like a doughnut – which brings planetary boundaries together with social boundaries, creating a safe and just space between the two, in which humanity can thrive. Moving into this space demands far greater equity – within and between countries – in the use of natural resources, and far greater efficiency in transforming those resources to meet human needs.
A new sustainable development module for a taught postgraduate engineering course provided an opportunity to design and streamline taught content, using a constructivist model of student learning. The design process revealed that a key learning objective for a postgraduate engineering student must be the competency to analyse difficult social and political contexts. The success of meeting this need by introducing cognitive mapping, a technique previously used in operations research and social science, is reported.
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