2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Background and Motivation: The need for engineering education to integrate societal impact demands scalable, yet low-barrier, curricular innovations. Building upon foundational research demonstrating the Nurse+Engineer as a V-shaped professional, this study presents an innovative model for expanding Interprofessional Education (IPE). While IPE typically focuses on clinical collaboration for individual patient care, this module expands the concept to address Planetary Health and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (specifically SDG 13: Climate Action). This intervention directly fuses engineering and the liberal arts by integrating systems thinking into clinical professional training, which specifically addresses ethics, societal impact, and the future of work.

Methodology and Implementation: A concise lecture on environmental engineering, professional practice, and climate action in the context of the SDGs was delivered to over 400 students in an existing IPE course across four semesters (Spring 2024, Autumn 2024, Spring 2025, and Autumn 2025). The five stated learning objectives aimed to shift student awareness from individual health to global socio-technical systems. Data collection utilized summative course evaluations where students responded to an open-ended question asking them to describe interprofessional impact in the Anthropocene/Climate Change context. A large language model (LLM) + human in the loop thematic analysis of the student responses identified core concepts emerging from student responses. Future work will employ quantitative methods to evaluate these emergent themes in great detail.

Results to Date and Anticipated Impact: The intervention was highly successful in encouraging systems thinking among students of healthcare professions participating in an IPE course. Initial thematic results showed students consistently moving beyond clinical roles to propose multidisciplinary approaches, including: 1) education and community awareness; 2) policy advocacy and legislative action; 3: sustainable healthcare operations; and 4) disaster preparedness and emergency response. The results of this study support a tentative conclusion that introducing engineering concepts to future healthcare professionals as part of existing IPE coursework successfully cultivates essential professional, non-technical skills (policy engagement and systems thinking). This scalable, one-lecture module successfully introduces systems thinking to professional students in healthcare who often study the liberal arts, offering a highly transferable curricular design model for low-cost, high-impact integration across professional programs. The project confirms the immense potential of the Nurse+Engineer framework to advance ethics, societal impact, and the future of work.