2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engineering design education increasingly emphasizes the importance of preparing students to navigate complex, multi-criteria decision-making contexts, particularly in sustainability-related tasks. Yet, novice engineers often default to a narrow set of familiar evaluation criteria, most commonly cost and performance while undervaluing broader sustainability considerations such as a chemical’s persistence, bioaccumulation, or life cycle impacts. This study examines whether explicit practice with multi-criteria decision-making in a green engineering course broadens students’ consideration of sustainability factors in design decisions.
Grounded in decision-making theory and sustainability competency frameworks, the course intervention engaged students in structured case studies, project-based assignments, and tradeoff analyses aligned with the principles of green chemistry and green engineering. These activities were designed to move students beyond technical calculations toward the recognition and application of multiple, and often competing, dimensions of sustainability.
At the start and end of the course, students (N=41) were asked to list the factors they would consider when comparing two processes or products. Responses were categorized into 12 predefined sustainability-related factors (e.g., cost, performance, risk, emissions, toxicity, life cycle impacts, bioaccumulation). Pre/post data were one-hot encoded into binary matrices and analyzed through frequency analysis, paired statistical tests, and breadth-of-thinking metrics.
Results reveal that before instruction, student considerations centered on cost (95%), performance (75%), energy (68%), and emissions (60%). After the course, inclusion rates increased substantially for life cycle impacts (+52%), toxicity (+45%), persistence (+40%), bioaccumulation (+38%), and waste generation (+30%). Students also considered a significantly greater number of factors post-course (Mean=10.2) than pre-course (Mean=5.6), p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 1.23, indicating a large effect size.
This work contributes to engineering education by offering empirical evidence that targeted instructional interventions can broaden students’ evaluative frameworks and promote systems-level design thinking. The findings support ongoing calls to better integrate sustainability competencies into undergraduate engineering curricula, while also demonstrating an assessment approach that can be replicated across contexts. Explicitly practicing multi-criteria decision-making appears to help students cross a threshold in their learning, moving from narrow techno-economic reasoning toward the multidimensional judgment required of socially responsible engineers.