2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

We describe a sustainability certificate in a general engineering program, the introductory seminar course that is the gateway to the certificate, and a new introductory textbook on sustainability.

The certificate comprises four components: the introductory seminar course, an elective (from an approved list), an experiential learning component, and a capstone analysis course. Both the introductory and capstone courses are one semester hour, allowing the certificate to fit into an already packed engineering program. The certificate was first offered in 2017 and, to date, has been completed by 61 students, which is about 11% of the graduates since inception.

The introductory class is intended to be accessible to all university students (first year to fourth year) without prerequisites. Learning outcomes include: describing sustainability, articulate how individual and collective actions relate to sustainability, identify sustainability interrelationships, demonstrate the need for interdisciplinary approach(es) to sustainability, and compare and contrast sustainable engineering practices and technologies.
The course has the following structure: first is an introduction, including a conceptual framework for thinking about sustainability, which is a hybrid of the IPAT and Kaya identities. The next session focuses on the impact of human activities on the environment, particularly focusing on human economic activities and our use of energy. After that, four sessions examine population dynamics, affluence (global gross domestic product per capita, GDP), the resources needed to produce one unit of global GDP, and the impacts of acquiring and using resources. Thus, the first part of the course sets up a conceptual framework for thinking about tradeoffs and different aspects of sustainability. The second part of the course considers four areas where the challenges of sustainability meet everyday life: housing, transportation, agriculture (food), and land use. The last two class sessions consider corporate and individual actions for increased sustainability.

Beginning in the fall of 2021, the class was “flipped” from lectures to discussion. A new textbook facilitated the transition. The textbook is intended to be easy to read but hard to digest. Each week, students read one chapter (10-15 pages) and take a straightforward quiz on the reading. Because the class is meant to be accessible to novice students, the book presents basic sustainability information and data with an emphasis on graphical and quantitative presentation. The book contains 66 figures and 8 tables. Some of the analysis and presentation is novel, including a series of graphs that show, in a unified way, population, affluence, energy consumption, and carbon emissions from 1800–present.

Class time is devoted to discussion of the moral and ethical implications of sustainability decisions and the values and presuppositions students bring into the classroom. 188 end-of-chapter questions support classroom discussions. In addition, there are 98 suggestions for individual or group research projects to inspire further study in sustainability. The goals of the course and textbook are to develop students’ critical thinking skills to engage sustainability as global citizens and future policy makers but with an eye towards what can they do in their personal lives to make a meaningful difference.