2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Background
In an interconnected and rapidly changing global economy and climate, engineers need both technical skills and strong behavioral skills and mindsets to understand the complex social and environmental context of their work. Many educators, organizations and accreditation boards have recognized the importance of integrating sustainability into engineering education, but for sustainability-focused education to be meaningful, it needs to be integrated thoughtfully into curricula, using evidence-based pedagogies. Prior work shows that rather than relying on the content-focused and lecture based strategies, project-based learning and other student-centered approaches are particularly effective for teaching sustainable development competencies.

Accreditation boards play an important role in shaping engineering education, including by requiring integration of sustainability into the curriculum. However, outcomes of sustainability-focused accreditation requirements (both in terms of how universities meet them and ultimately the effect on student learning) have not been thoroughly evaluated.

Objectives
We argue that careful evaluation of the impact of accreditation requirements on curricula, student experience and learning outcomes is essential. We explore sustainability-focused accreditation goals, their implementation in universities, and their effect on student learning. We focus primarily on the Canadian context as a case study, comparing it against ABET and other international frameworks. Our goal is to answer the following research questions:
* RQ1: How are sustainability-oriented goals of Engineers Canada translated into concrete requirements and procedures, how do they compare to international counterparts, and to the Engineering for One Planet (EOP) framework?
* RQ2: How are universities meeting these requirements, and how do existing sustainability courses compare with relevant pedagogical best practices?
* RQ3: What is the student perception of sustainability requirements, their experience in sustainability-focused classes, and their self-reported learning outcomes?

Assessment Methods and Results
RQ1 and RQ2 are primarily assessed through a review of literature and an analysis of accreditation documents, course descriptions, course materials and educator interviews. We compare sustainability accreditation goals, criteria and procedures between Engineers Canada, ABET and the EOP framework. We gather and analyze course material and course descriptions from 6 disciplines across 15 accredited Canadian engineering programs and evaluate the extent to which they are in line with the recommendations of relevant research. We see that different universities take significantly different approaches to sustainability education, and that while examples of creative student centered sustainability education exist, much of it remains content-focused and lecture-based.

To address RQ3, we survey engineering students across disciplines and universities to understand their experiences and evaluate learning outcomes. Initial student surveys and interviews suggest that while many students care deeply about sustainability, many express frustration with required coursework that they struggle to meaningfully link with their work and careers. We will explore these perspectives in more detail and compare student experience across universities and disciplines.

Conclusions
Sustainability education in engineering is critical, but for it to be meaningful, it needs to be thoughtfully implemented. We evaluate the impact of sustainability-focused accreditation requirements on university curricula, student experience and learning outcomes and discuss challenges and opportunities for developing more effective sustainability education in engineering programs.