2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In order to meet ABET student outcomes (2) “the ability to apply engineering design to produce solutions that meet specified needs with consideration of public health, safety and welfare, as well as global, cultural, social, environmental and economic factors” and (4) “ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations and make informed judgements, which must consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental and social contexts” our department has incorporated various assignments and projects into our required core courses, to provide students the opportunity to demonstrate that they have achieved these outcomes.

In this paper, we will provide the organization of our curriculum which supports these outcomes throughout the sophomore through senior years, and will include examples of homework assignments, quizzes, and projects (with grading rubrics). These assignments provide students with the foundation they need to complete larger scale projects during their senior year, in three capstone courses (Process Control, Safety & Ethics, and Process Design). In the sophomore material & energy balance course, students complete a hands-on design project (e.g., hemodialysis system, hot air balloon with mathematical model). Student teams must also consider the impact of their design solution in a global, economic, environmental, and social context. The following semester, in the thermodynamics course, student analyze the impact of the use of salt or other materials to melt snow/ice. In the junior year, students in the transport course, explore the consequences of emitting effluents into local steams. The reactive process engineering course has students investigate the production of a high-volume product by examining the company’s performance records, to analyze the social impact of the product.

In the process control course, students complete a Global Project in which they collaborate with a foreign organization to become acquainted with a problem in that foreign country. The students then analyze the problem and propose an engineering solution. Students in the safety & ethics course learn about the Deepwater Horizon incident (from a co-author who served on the flow rate estimation team). Each student team must then report on the technical, ethical, economic, global, environmental, and regulatory aspects of the Deepwater Horizon incident and the related efforts to stop the leak, clean up the spill, to prevent similar occurrences. Students apply what they have learned from the Deepwater Horizon project, to analyze a storage tank explosion incident (where the co-author provided expert witness testimony), and design simple strategies to prevent a re-occurrence of this fatal incident. And finally in the process design class, students are required to complete a design project, which includes process synthesis, equipment design, process optimization & control, and economic analysis of a chemical plant. Students propose a location for their plant and are also assigned a second location in a different continent and compare and contrast the impact of their design in a global, economic, environmental, and social context for the two separate locations. Details of these assignments and projects will be shared, and examples of student work will be featured.