2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Background and Motivation: Addressing the risks of a changing climate requires engineering education to prioritize community resilience and collective action alongside technological solutions. To meet this need, this project develops a foundation of specific, measurable learning outcomes for pre-licensure and licensed professional engineers. This work is critical for fostering civically engaged practitioners who are prepared for community-engaged engineering practice. We directly leverage ongoing discourse from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) project entitled, “Education for Thriving in a Changing Climate” initiative.

Methodology and Justification: Our unique mixed-methods methodology combines machine processing of high-volume content with expert validation. We utilize a large language model (LLM) (Google Gemini 3.0 Pro) to map core professional engineering resources (e.g., ABET EAC (Engineering Accreditation Commission) criteria, ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) Body of Knowledge 3.0, and the Lemelson Engineering for One Planet framework) onto transcripts from four public panels that were part of the NASEM panel work. Expert human review through Human-in-the-Loop confirms LLM mapping (also known as LLM+HitL). Confirmed mapping was then validated using a convenience sample of five Board Certified environmental engineering leaders. Critically, this process defines proposed outcomes not just for professional compliance but for utility in civil deliberation and community-level risk management – as described in The Trust Equation.

Results to Date and Anticipated Impact: The central hypothesis is that integrating defined resilience outcomes into coursework and continuing professional development will significantly improve the management of community-level, socio-technical risks. Initial synthesis has yielded a draft curriculum framework organized around four themes: 1) Systems Thinking and Multidisciplinary Complexity, 2) Sustainability as a Design Constraint and Objective, 3) Ethical Responsibility and Social Context, and 4) Professional Communication and Collaborative Teamwork. We have secured commitments from the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists (AAEES) to develop and pilot test a module introducing Therapeutic Communication Techniques (TCT) as a tool for engineers to engage effectively with communities, demonstrating a strong commitment to transferability and impact beyond the academic sphere.