2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Introducing Social and Environmental Sustainability Aspects Cohesively throughout the Student Experience: One Course at a Time while Considering the Program as a Whole

Presented at MECH - Technical Session 12: Promoting Student Success and Motivation

This WIP paper outlines the approach of introducing sustainability elements integrally throughout a curriculum at a large mid-Atlantic R1 university, the University of Maryland, College Park. Sustainability is considered broadly to include the three pillars of sustainability - environmental, social, and economic - but also explicitly addresses aspects from the Engineering for One Planet (EOP) framework - systems thinking and critical thinking - as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and student agency or empowerment to act. These curricular aspects are often relegated to isolated assignments, and the current approach is to instead thread these aspects cohesively throughout the entire four year student experience. The effort includes faculty training, individual course modifications, the addition of new courses and student experiences, and programmatic assessment.

A faculty workshop was conducted in winter 2023 that introduced sustainability concepts and tools. Division leaders and instructors of key required courses were specifically enrolled. Individual course modifications were proposed, but within the context of understanding and mapping out the entire student experience across all required undergraduate classes. This paper discusses the shift toward developing an active community of practice, the development of a sustainability teaching certificate, managing individual course modifications, identification and mapping of relevant learning outcomes throughout the required curriculum, programmatic assessments, and work toward sustainment of the effort by providing valued assessment reporting.

Authors

Dr. Elisabeth Smela http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3921-2265 University of Maryland, College Park [biography]

Elisabeth Smela is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland. She received a BS in physics from MIT and a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, Dr. Smela had worked as a research scientist in Linköping, Sweden and in Risø, Denmark before becoming Vice President of Research and Development at Santa Fe Science and Technology, NM. Dr. Smela’s research interests are focused on polymeric and cell-based sensors and actuators. She has served as Associate Dean for Faculty and Graduate Affairs, Equity Administrator, and Diversity Officer, and she then served a year as a Jefferson Science Fellow at the Department of State to stand up the US-ASEAN Smart Cities Network. She has recently been working with a group of engineering faculty to better integrate sustainability concepts throughout the curriculum.
Dr. Vincent Nguyen University of Maryland, College Park [biography]

Vincent P. Nguyen is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is a founding member of the Environmental and Socially Responsible Engineering (ESRE) group who work to integrate and track conscientious engineering aspects throughout the undergraduate educational experience across the college. His efforts include formally integrating sustainability design requirements into the mechanical engineering capstone projects, introducing non-profit partnerships related to designs for persons with disabilities, and founding the Social/Environmental Design Impact Award. He manages several outreach and diversity efforts including the large-scale Get Out And Learn (GOAL) engineering kit program that reaches thousands of local K-12 students.
Dr. Natasha Andrade University of Maryland, College Park [biography]

Dr. Natasha Andrade is a Senior Lecturer and the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Maryland College Park. Her responsibilities include overseeing the undergraduate program and teaching various undergraduate courses in civil and environmental engineering.
Andrew Elby University of Maryland, College Park [biography]

Andrew Elby's work focuses on student and teacher epistemologies and how they couple to other cognitive machinery and help to drive behavior in learning environments. His academic training was in Physics and Philosophy before he turned to science (partic

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