2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

An interdisciplinary team comprised of chemical engineering (CHE) and education faculty at University X proposed the BioFoundry Initiative which is the integration of sustainability-focused training in Foundry-guided courses. Specifically, the intervention includes the purposeful pairing of the Engineering for One Planet (EOP) framework1 with the Renaissance Foundry model (i.e., the Foundry)2 in an undergraduate chemical engineering course that requires student teams to identify and address societal challenges as learning outcomes. The BioFoundry Initiative was initially funded by a VentureWell Faculty grant that provided support for the first iteration of the initiative that focused on biomimicry elements. This was expanded upon by an American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) EOP Mini-Grant Program wherein the biomimicry elements were integrated into the nine principles reflected in the EOP framework. Both represent an expansion of the normal course-related efforts that for the last several years have leveraged the successful implementation of the Foundry to guide innovative and interdisciplinary learning environments in chemical engineering.3,4
In this contribution, we offer an overview of the pedagogical elements of the BioFoundry Initiative as well as efforts to evaluate the initial outcomes related to the ASEE EOP Mini-Grant Program. Originally, three major outcomes were associated with the ASEE EOP Mini-Grant Program: 1) students would produce prototypes of innovative technology that address real-world societal challenges that are environmentally and socially sustainable; 2) efforts in this course would be shared for the benefit of other educators to integrate the EOP and Foundry-guided paired strategy into engineering education courses, and 3) instruction would be provided in a foundational core courses that would resonate throughout students’ program of study in chemical engineering. As part of this contribution, we offer preliminary evidence that speaks to all three of these outcomes as well as lessons learned from the implementation of this work. We also provide implications for integrating the EOP framework into engineering education and offer next steps related to the development of the BioFoundry Initiative in chemical engineering curriculum.