2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Mechanical engineers can play an important role in contributing to a sustainable future. Groups traditionally underrepresented in engineering including women and minoritized groups are motivated to improve societal and environmental conditions. Thus, increasing the amount and visibility of sustainability-related content in mechanical engineering (ME) curricula and courses may broaden the demographics of students earning ME degrees. For example, mechanical engineering (ME) lags environmental engineering with respect to the percentage of Bachelor’s degrees awarded to women in the U.S.; e.g., mechanical 17.3% versus environmental 57.8%. Potential correlations between the sustainability scores of a university under the American Association for Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) STARS rating system and the percentage of engineering Bachelor’s degrees awarded to female students were explored. Courses with sustainability content were identified using information submitted by universities to the AASHE STARS program and/or course catalogs. This included Bachelor’s level ME courses and general engineering courses required for ME students. The data set included 89 ME programs in the U.S. that were ABET accredited, of which 72 programs had AASHE STARS scores. There were weak statistically significant correlations between the total AASHE STARS scores and the percentage of engineering and ME Bachelor’s degrees awarded to females. However, there was not a direct correlation between the percentage of females awarded ME Bachelor’s degrees and the number of identified ME courses with sustainability. The demographics of students earning Bachelor’s degrees in ME is likely due to a broad array of factors beyond the extent that sustainability is evident in the courses. For example, differences among private and public institutions were significant. Strong correlations were found between the number of mechanical engineering courses with sustainability and the percentage of Bachelor’s degrees earned by females when relationship were explored within single states and either public or private institutions. This preliminary work suggests that sustainability may help attract and retain female students to mechanical engineering, sparking interest in future research.