2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

A Unique, Action-Oriented, Collaborative Approach to Co-Creating a New Open-Source Sustainability Teaching Guide under a Creative Commons License

Presented at Environmental Engineering Division (ENVIRON) Technical Session 4 - Engineering for One Planet & Sustainability Innovation

The Interdivisional Town Hall (ITH) at the 2023 ASEE Annual Conference delivered a forum for focused discussions on the topic of “Preparing Engineering Students for an Ever-Changing Planet.”

Under this umbrella, the first half of the 90-minute ITH session engaged participants in parallel roundtable discussions about four topics:
Topic 1 — The Changing Context of DEI in Engineering Education
Topic 2 — The Impact of Generative AI on Engineering Education
Topic 3 — Changing the Curriculum, Course Structure, and Culture of Engineering Education
Topic 4 – Understanding and Supporting Students Where They Are Day-to-Day

The second half of the session included a brief introduction of the framework of the Engineering for One Planet (EOP) effort and the work to be done to consider how sustainability can be part of the engineering canon. This led to parallel roundtable discussions to share recommendations and generate ideas for introducing sustainability into existing core and required courses using free, open-source resources from EOP.

Fueled by collaboration among educators, students, industry and nonprofit professionals with diverse engineering backgrounds and lived experiences, EOP is an effort to infuse social and environmental sustainability and related professional competencies (“student learning outcomes”) across all engineering disciplines. The goal is to prepare all engineers with the skills, knowledge and understanding to protect and improve our planet and our lives. The cornerstone of the EOP initiative is the EOP Framework. Designed as a flexible menu to help faculty introduce sustainability topics, the EOP Framework includes a total of 93 core and advanced learning outcomes across nine topic areas. Each learning outcome is mapped to ABET’s student outcomes accreditation requirements and articulated using Bloom’s Taxonomy. EOP has also published open source companion teaching guides to provide step-by-step pedagogical instructions and links to publicly available teaching resources. The EOP initiative not only provides free resources to help inform and accelerate the infusion of sustainability across engineering disciplines, it provides grants, supports peer learning and faculty capacity-building and supports collaborative efforts.

This paper will explore the unique, action-oriented, collaborative approach to the ITH session, which resulted in the co-creation of a new open-source teaching guide published under a Creative Commons license. In the course of 30 minutes, presenters guided 94 participants through prompts, examples and teaching tools to create examples for teaching seven of the nine sustainability topics in the EOP Framework: systems thinking, environmental literacy, responsible business and economy, social responsibility, environmental impact assessment, critical thinking, and community and teamwork. Presenters generated examples for the two missing topics: design and materials selection. Presenters then compiled, edited and published the guide, which included a list of all contributors.

Authors

Cindy Cooper http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7253-4042 The Lemelson Foundation [biography]

As a Senior Program Officer for The Lemelson Foundation, Cindy leads the U.S. higher education initiative to educate the next generation of inventors and the Engineering for One Planet initiative to change engineering education to equip all engineers with fundamental skills in sustainability.
Cynthia Anderson Alula Consulting [biography]

Cindy Anderson (she/her/hers) is a sustainability consultant with Alula Consulting, and a strategy consultant for Engineering for One Planet with The Lemelson Foundation. Cindy specializes in innovative sustainability-focused research and curriculum projects for academic institutions, non-profits, government and corporations. Cindy has taught thousands of people through courses and workshops, around the world and online, in the fields of biology, sustainability and biomimicry. She is honored to be a collaborative partner on the Engineering for One Planet initiative since its inception, co-author of the EOP Framework and framework companion teaching guides, and active EOP Network Member. Cindy holds a MS from Oregon State University, a MEd from Griffith University (Queensland, Australia), and a BSc in biology from the University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada).
Dr. Lynn A. Albers http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1436-0256 Hofstra University [biography]

Dr. Lynn Albers is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering of the Fred DeMatteis School of Engineering and Applied Science at Hofstra University. Her previous academic contribution was as one of the founding five faculty/staff at Campbell University, helping the newly formed School of Engineering grow and establish roots in the community. A proponent of Hands-On Activities in the classroom and during out-of-school time programs, she believes that they complement any teaching style thereby reaching all learning styles. She earned her doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University specializing in thermal sciences where her dissertation research spanned three colleges and focused on Engineering Education. Her passions include but are not limited to Engineering Education, Energy Engineering and Conservation, and K-20 STEM Outreach. Prior to matriculating at NCSU, she worked at the North Carolina Solar Center developing a passion for wind and solar energy research while learning renewable energy policy. She combined these passions with K-20 STEM Outreach while a National Science Foundation Fellow with the GK-12 Outreach Program at NCSU where she began Energy Clubs, an out-of-school-time program for third, fourth and fifth graders to introduce them to renewable energy.
Dr. John K. Estell http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6419-6821 Ohio Northern University [biography]

An active member of ASEE for over 30 years, Dr. John K. Estell was elected in 2016 as a Fellow of ASEE in recognition of the breadth, richness, and quality of his contributions to the betterment of engineering education. Estell currently serves as chair of ASEE's IT Committee; he previously served on the ASEE Board of Directors as the Vice President of Professional Interest Councils and as the Chair of Professional Interest Council III. He has held multiple ASEE leadership positions within the First-Year Programs (FPD) and Computers in Education (CoED) divisions, and with the Ad Hoc Committee on Interdivisional Cooperation, Interdivisional Town Hall Planning Committee, ASEE Active, and the Commission on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Estell has received multiple ASEE Annual Conference Best Paper awards from the Computers in Education, First-Year Programs, and Design in Engineering Education Divisions. He has also been recognized by ASEE as the recipient of the 2005 Merl K. Miller Award and by the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) with the 2018 ASEE Best Card Award. Estell received the First-Year Programs Division’s Distinguished Service Award in 2019 and the 2022 Computers in Education Division Service Award.

Estell currently serves as an ABET Commissioner and as a subcommittee chair on ABET’s Accreditation Council Training Committee. He was previously a Member-At-Large on the Computing Accreditation Commission Executive Committee and a Program Evaluator for both computer engineering and computer science. Estell is well-known for his significant contributions on streamlining student outcomes assessment processes and has been an invited presenter at the ABET Symposium on multiple occasions. He was named an ABET Fellow in 2021. Estell is also a founding member and current Vice President of The Pledge of the Computing Professional, an organization dedicated to the promotion of ethics in the computing professions.

Estell is Professor of Computer Engineering and Computer Science at Ohio Northern University, where he currently teaches first-year programming and user interface design courses, and serves on the college’s Capstone Design Committee. Much of his research involves design education pedagogy, including formative assessment of client-student interactions, modeling sources of engineering design constraints, and applying the entrepreneurial mindset to first-year programming projects through student engagement in educational software development. Estell earned his BS in Computer Science and Engineering degree from The University of Toledo and both his MS and PhD degrees in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Dr. Micah Lande http://orcid.org/https://0000-0003-4964-5654 South Dakota School of Mines and Technology [biography]

Micah Lande, PhD is an Assistant Professor and E.R. Stensaas Chair for Engineering Education in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology. Dr. Lande directs the Holistic Engineering Lab & Observatory. He teaches human-centered engineering design, design thinking, and design innovation courses. Dr. Lande researches how technical and non-technical people learn and apply design thinking and making processes to their work. He is interested in the intersection of designerly epistemic identities and vocational pathways. Dr. Lande received his B.S. in Engineering (Product Design), M.A. in Education (Learning, Design and Technology) and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering (Design Education) from Stanford University.
Prof. Bala Maheswaran Northeastern University [biography]

Bala Maheswaran, PhD
COE Distinguished Professor
Northeastern University
367 Snell Engineering Center
Boston, MA 02115

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