preparing future engineers for challenges of the 21st century: sustainable engineering
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Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 698–701
Contents lists avai
Journal of Cleaner Production
journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/ jc lepro
Educational Initiatives
Preparing future engineers for challenges of the 21st century:Sustainable engineering
Cliff I. Davidson b,*, Chris T. Hendrickson a, H. Scott Matthews b, Michael W. Bridges c, David T. Allen d,Cynthia F. Murphy d, Braden R. Allenby e, John C. Crittenden f, Sharon Austin g
a Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USAb Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USAc Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USAd Center for Energy and Environmental Resources, University of Texas, 10100 Burnet Road, M/C R7100, Austin, TX 78758, USAe Department of Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering, Arizona State University, P.O. Box 875306, Tempe, AZ 85287-5306, USAf School Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 790 Atlantic Dr., Atlanta, GA 30332-0355, USAg Economics, Exposure, and Technology Division, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Mail Code 7406 M, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW,Washington, DC 20460, USA
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:Received 20 November 2009Received in revised form14 December 2009Accepted 14 December 2009Available online 6 January 2010
Keywords:SustainabilityEducationGreen engineeringSustainable engineeringWorkshops
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 412 268 2951; faxE-mail addresses: [email protected] (C.I. Davidson), cth
[email protected] (H.S. Matthews), [email protected] (D.T. Allen), [email protected] (Casu.edu (B.R. Allenby), [email protected]@epa.gov (S. Austin).
0959-6526/$ – see front matter � 2010 Elsevier Ltd.doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2009.12.021
a b s t r a c t
The field of engineering is changing rapidly as the growing global population puts added demands on theearth’s resources: engineering decisions must now account for limitations in materials and energy as well asthe need to reduce discharges of wastes. This means educators must revise courses and curricula soengineering graduates are prepared for the new challenges as practicing engineers. The Center forSustainable Engineering has been established to help faculty members accommodate such changes throughworkshops and new educational materials, including a free access website with peer-reviewed materials.
� 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
As the global population approaches seven billion and standardsof living around the world improve, engineers are being pressed touse the limited natural resources of the world to satisfy ever-increasing human demands. For example, to avoid damaging theearth’s life support systems, engineers are tasked with developingmethods to produce carbon-neutral forms of energy. They areasked to design buildings that use local materials and havecomponents that can be re-used. They are requested to providefaster and safer mobility with vehicles that do not use fossil fuels.
: þ1 412 268 [email protected] (C.T. Hendrickson),m (M.W. Bridges), [email protected]. Murphy), braden.allenby@du (J.C. Crittenden), austin.
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Such challenges require new training for engineers around theglobe.
Unfortunately, few engineering schools have made majorupdates to their courses and curricula over the past few decades.Boyle [5] notes that making such updates is thwarted by thesignificant amount of time needed to make changes, the challengeof inserting new material into already crowded courses andcurricula, and the lack of a sense of priority about such changes.Only recently have colleges and universities begun includingtopics in sustainable engineering (SE) in their course material,such as life cycle assessment, concepts in renewable energy, andmethods of waste minimization. Yet the need for change is urgent,as currently graduating engineers may not realize the constraintsof limited resources and limited sinks for waste products as theyenter the workforce; their more seasoned colleagues used toapproaching engineering problems with older metrics are notlikely to be of much help. The challenge is all the more onerouswhen one considers that every year there are roughly 70,000 newengineering graduates with four-year degrees in the U.S. [13],
C.I. Davidson et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 698–701 699
produced by over 1500 engineering units and departments atmore than 350 colleges and universities [1]. Internationally thereare over 100,000 engineering graduates in Europe and 350,000 inChina. India has around 215,000 engineering graduates per year,evenly divided between three-year and four-year degrees [6]. Allof these engineering students require textbooks and othereducational materials, and making changes to those materials toinclude SE topics is time consuming and expensive [7].
The Center for Sustainable Engineering (CSE) was established in2005 with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation andEnvironmental Protection Agency. As a partnership among Carne-gie Mellon University, the University of Texas at Austin, and ArizonaState University, the CSE was organized to assist engineering facultymembers in updating their courses and curricula to includepressing issues of the 21st century related to sustainable develop-ment. This term has been defined in numerous ways, although thedefinition most often cited is that of the [15]: Humanity has theability to make development sustainable – to ensure that it meets theneeds of the present without compromising the ability of futuregenerations to meet their own needs. This definition is ‘‘creativelyambiguous’’ and can mean different things to different people,according to [11], who question what it is we are trying to sustainand what it is we are trying to develop. There is no unique answer,and while that fact has enabled many to use the term to suit theirown purposes, the ambiguous definition is an impediment forengineers who must define terms precisely when working to solveproblems facing society [4].
The CSE has engaged in three activities since its founding. First,it has conducted two-day workshops for engineering faculty whowish to augment their courses and curricula with SE material. It hasalso conducted a benchmark assessment of educational programs,courses, and modules on SE in schools around the country. Finally,it has established an Electronic Library where anyone can submiteducational modules for peer review, and anyone can accessmodules on the web free of charge.
2. Workshops
There have been six workshops for engineering faculty orga-nized by the CSE, two in July 2006 at Carnegie Mellon, two in July2007 at the University of Texas at Austin, and two in July 2009 atCarnegie Mellon. Faculty members from more than 100 collegesand universities have attended these workshops. The statistics ofparticipating faculty at these workshops are shown in Table 1 andFig. 1, and the agenda of the 2009 workshops is shown in Table 2. Inaddition to these six regular workshops, a planning workshop washeld at Arizona State University in January 2008.
The overall goal of the workshops is to enable a dialog amongfaculty members committed to changing engineering education attheir home institutions to incorporate the concepts and tools ofsustainable engineering. By sharing class syllabi and comparingnotes on what works at different schools, participants can gleannumerous ideas to help them develop new educational modulesand courses. Furthermore, the workshops have helped catalyzea community of engineering faculty members dedicated to betterpreparation of young engineers who will face major challenges inthe years ahead.
Table 1Information on Workshop Participants.
Year of Workshops Tenured Untenured Male Female Minoritya
2006 28 33 44 17 42007 28 30 39 19 52009 22 33 35 20 5
a Black and Hispanic Participants.
The six regular workshops were evaluated using anonymoussurveys. Participants rated each workshop session and were askedto provide comments on the most useful aspects of the day’sworkshop sessions and on what sessions could be modified orimproved. Participants were also asked to rate the extent to whichthe workshop facilitated various activities, and then rate howsatisfied they were with the overall quality of the workshop. Resultsare shown in Table 3. The table shows participants felt on averagethat the individual sessions ranked between ‘‘Moderately Valuable’’and ‘‘Very Valuable’’. They felt the extent to which the workshopfacilitated the listed activities was between ‘‘Some’’ and ‘‘A GreatDeal’’. The written comments from participants were generallyquite positive, with a number of constructive suggestions forimprovement which were incorporated into later workshops.
Other workshops with different approaches have begunappearing at universities around the country. For example, someschools are now organizing internal faculty workshops to discussways of introducing sustainability issues into classes campus-wide.Furthermore, different models for workshops are now being dis-cussed, such as conducting them at professional meetings orthrough webinars.
3. Benchmark assessment
The CSE sent out two types of questionnaires to benchmarkefforts in SE education and research in the U.S. [2,12]. The firstquestionnaire was distributed in 2007 to 1368 engineeringdepartment and program heads at 364 schools where there was atleast one program accredited by ABET (formerly AccreditationBoard for Engineering and Technology). This questionnaire focusedon SE at the program level without addressing individual courses.Roughly 300 responses were received.
The second questionnaire was sent in 2008 there were 327additional faculty members who were identified as SE ‘‘cham-pions’’. These individuals were chosen based on their journalpublications, attendance at one of the CSE workshops, andrecommendations by department and program heads whocompleted the first questionnaire. In addition to information at theprogram level, this questionnaire sought details about the SEcontent of individual courses as well as textbooks and othermaterials. A total of 137 valid responses were obtained.
Roughly G of the engineering programs in the ‘‘top 100’’ insti-tutions rated by U.S. News and World Report had at least onedepartment or program responding to the questionnaires. Some23% of the respondents reported BS or MS programs related tosustainability, representing 65 departments in 53 institutions.However, about 80% of the respondents reported at least somecourse content in sustainability. A total of 155 individual courseswith SE content were described, covering a wide range of engi-neering topics. These courses were distributed among civil, envi-ronmental, and architectural engineering (64), mechanical,aerospace, and manufacturing engineering (32), chemical, biolog-ical, and materials engineering (18), industrial, systems, andsustainable engineering (13), and finally general engineering andother engineering disciplines (28) [3].
Based on the descriptions in the questionnaire responses, thecourses were divided into four categories. These include (i) courseswith SE concepts and tools as their main focus, (ii) traditionalengineering courses with some SE content added, (iii) cross-disci-plinary courses between engineering and non-engineeringdepartments, and (iv) courses that include technologies consideredenabling for sustainability, e.g., a course on energy that includesa section on carbon capture. Roughly half the courses were of thefirst type, and about one-quarter were of the second type. The restwere evenly divided among the third and fourth types [12].
Fig. 1. Colleges and universities represented at the CSE Workshops. Points on the map show the locations of all home institutions of faculty members attending workshops in 2006,2007, and 2009.
C.I. Davidson et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 698–701700
A section of the questionnaire addressed SE-related researchprojects. The total funding of these projects was about $250 million.The most frequently described projects were in the area of Energyand Power Generation, followed by Industrial Processes, End-of-Life and Waste Management, Building and Construction, Water,Transportation, Humanities (including education), and ClimateChange, in that order. The most frequently listed funding sourcewas NSF with an average project size of $300 K over three years[12].
Significant differences in the extent of sustainable engineeringcontent in courses and curricula among schools are also evidentfrom assessment projects in other parts of the world. For example,a survey by the Natural Edge Project in late 2007 provided data
Table 2Agenda for the 2009 CSE Workshops.
Day 1Introduction and goals: A transition in engineering educationSustainable Engineering: What is it?Panel of workshop participants: How are engineering programs around the
U.S. implementing SE?Teaching SE to freshmen and sophomoresBreakout groups: Best practices in SE educationReports from breakout groupsLearning objectives with examples from SEBreakout groups: topics of interest in SE modules and coursesReports from breakout groupsHomework: participants write learning objectives for a module or course with
SE content they are teaching or plan to teach
Day 2Presentation of learning objectives from selected participantsLife cycle assessment as a tool for SEBreakout groups: tools and metrics in SEReports from breakout groupsNSF funding opportunities in SECSE Electronic LibraryWorkshop summary
Breakout Groups:EnergyManufacturing, Materials, and DesignStructures, Construction, and InfrastructureAir and Water Resources
from 27 out of the 33 Australian universities with engineeringprograms. The survey focused on energy efficiency as an indicatorof course content in sustainable engineering, and results showedhighly variable amounts of content in this topic across engineeringdepartments and across universities [10]. The Alliance for GlobalSustainability conducted a survey in 2008 which included 57universities in Europe and showed differences in emphasis onsustainable development in engineering programs among theuniversities, with growing interest in this area [14].
4. Electronic library
The CSE Electronic Library has been established to enable thedevelopment and use of educational materials on SE free of charge.Submissions are peer-reviewed, and can include class handouts,lecture notes, homework assignments, projects, educational soft-ware, and other types of educational materials.
The repository of CSE modules is part of the EngineeringPathway website of the University of California at Berkeley. All ofthe modules can be accessed through the CSE website at http://www.csengin.org, or through the Engineering Pathway website athttp://www.engineeringpathway.com by selecting Advanced
Table 3Summary of Assessments by Workshop Participants.
Year ofWorkshops
IndividualSessionsa
Extent to which WorkshopFacilitated Several Activitiesb
Quality ofWorkshopc
2006 3.3� 0.3 3.3� 0.3 3.6� 0.62007 3.3� 0.3 3.4� 0.3 3.5� 0.62009 3.4� 0.2 3.6� 0.2 3.7� 0.5
Explanation of Scores.a Individual Sessions: 4¼ ‘‘Very Valuable’’, 3¼ ‘‘Moderately Valuable’’,
2¼ ‘‘Minimally Valuable’’, 1¼ ‘‘Not Valuable’’.b Facilitated Several Activities: the extent to which the workshop facilitated (i)
sharing of ideas, materials, and methods, (ii) developing learning objectives in SE,(iii) networking with others interested in SE, (iv) clarifying understanding of thefield of SE, and (v) expanding teaching in SE with scores 4¼ ‘‘A Great Deal’’,3¼ ‘‘Some’’, 2¼ ‘‘A Little’’, 1¼ ‘‘Not At All’’.
c Quality of Workshop: 4¼ ‘‘Very Satisfied’’, 3¼ ‘‘Moderately Satisfied’’, 2¼ ‘‘ALittle Satisfied’’, 1¼ ‘‘Not At All Satisfied’’.
C.I. Davidson et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 698–701 701
Search followed by Higher Education Search, and choosing theCenter for Sustainable Engineering collection.
Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of some of this work were presented at the 2009American Society of Engineering Education conference [8] and theIndo-US Workshop on Designing Sustainable Products, Services,and Manufacturing Systems [9]. The Center for Sustainable Engi-neering is funded by NSF Grant DUE-0442618, and by EPA GrantAgreement X3-83235101. Although work in the Center has beenfunded in part by the EPA, this paper has not been subjected to theAgency’s peer and policy review and therefore does not necessarilyreflect the views of the agency, and no official endorsement shouldbe inferred. The logistics of the workshops were coordinated byNichole Dwyer, Barbara Bugosh, Andrea Rooney, and GloriaDadowski. The preparation of this paper was facilitated by MireilleMobley.
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[15] World Commission on Environment and Development. Our common future.Oxford, England: Oxford University Press; 1987. p. 8.
Cliff Davidson is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Engineeringand Public Policy, at Carnegie Mellon. He is the Director of the Center for SustainableEngineering and former President of the American Association for Aerosol Research.He has several decades of experience conducting air quality measurement andmodeling research at CMU, and has developed educational materials in GreenEngineering.
Chris Hendrickson is the Duquesne Light Company Professor of Engineering, formerhead of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Co-Director of theGreen Design Institute. He has several decades of experience conducting research atCMU in life cycle assessment, construction management, infrastructure, and benefit-cost analysis.
Scott Matthews is Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, andEngineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon. He is also Director of Research forthe Green Design Institute at CMU, and the Co-Director of the Green Practices programat CMU. He has conducted research in life cycle assessment, material flow analysis,environmental implications of e-commerce, and infrastructure sensing, among othertopics.
Michael Bridges is a former staff member at the University Center for Social and UrbanResearch at the University of Pittsburgh, and a former staff member of the EberlyCenter for Teaching Excellence at Carnegie Mellon.
David Allen is the Melvin H. Gertz Regents Chair in Chemical Engineering and theDirector of the Center for Energy and Environmental Resources at the University ofTexas at Austin. He has conducted research in air quality for several decades and wasa lead investigator in the Texas Air Quality Study, one of the largest air pollutionstudies conducted to-date. He has also spearheaded efforts in writing Green Engi-neering educational materials.
Cynthia Murphy is a Research Associate at the Center for Energy and EnvironmentalResources at the University of Texas at Austin. She has conducted research there formany years on ways to promote electronics recycling and methods to improve emis-sion inventories for air quality models. Previously, she spent 16 years in the electronicsindustry and two years in the mining industry.
Braden Allenby is the Lincoln Professor at Arizona State University, and has appoint-ments in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and in Law, at ASU. Until 2004, he wasthe Environment, Health, and Safety Vice President for AT&T. He had previously servedas Director for Energy and Environmental Systems at Lawrence Livermore NationalLaboratory.
John Crittenden is the Hightower Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholarin the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute ofTechnology. His research interests are in pollution prevention, physical-chemicaltreatment processes in air and waste water, and modeling of fixed-bed reactors andabsorbers. Dr. Crittenden is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Sharon Austin is a staff member with the Chemical Engineering Branch at the Office ofPollution Prevention and Toxics at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She hasled several efforts in development of Green Engineering educational material.