2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Increasingly civil engineers are being asked to consider a lens of planetary health, which is focused on analyzing and addressing the impacts of human disruptions to Earth’s natural systems on human health and all life on Earth. But what are “natural systems”? And how would a civil engineer answer the question, “are people a part of nature, or separate from nature?” One way to improve how civil engineers differentiate and integrate humans and nature is to borrow from the adjacent profession of nursing.

To provide civil engineers with an appropriate theoretical lens to understand humans and nature, two theories from nursing were incorporated into a teaching module that emphasizes engineering ethics, including the ASCE Code of Ethics. The first is the “Environmental Theory” of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, who explains that, “…the chief purpose of the [nurse or engineer] is to modify the environment to prevent illness and enhance healing.” As part of the same module, students are introduced to the “Nursing Need Theory” of Virginia Henderson who noted that the, “unique function of the [nurse or engineer] is to assist the individual, sick or well, in the performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery (or to peaceful death) that he would perform unaided if he had the necessary strength, will, or knowledge.” Thus, human health, and the health of the environment upon which human health ultimately depends for clean air, clean water, nutritious food, and protection from the elements, are interrelated and inseparable such that damage to the planetary environment must be viewed as damage to human health.

This module was incorporated into an existing department-wide required course entitled, “Fundamentals of Environmental Engineering.” This course is required of undergraduate students of civil engineering, architectural engineering, and environmental engineering. This article includes content and pedagogical details of the module as well as evaluations of student learning and assessments of instructor teaching. This study builds upon our prior result, which reported on a module leveraging nursing theory to create an improved understanding of “public” as part of the code of ethics where an engineer “holds paramount the health, safety, and welfare of the public”.

As educators equip students of civil engineering to “change the world,” there is a benefit of “borrowing” theory from the adjacent profession of nursing to improve understanding within pre-service learning as well as in the professional practice of civil engineering.