2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Integrating Sustainability into a Core Chemical Process Safety Course

Presented at Social Responsibility, Sustainability, and Safety

The modern chemical engineering curriculum must evolve to address the global imperative for sustainable design and practice. While dedicated elective courses on sustainability are valuable, integrating these concepts into core, required courses is essential to demonstrate their fundamental importance. This paper details a novel, student-led initiative to infuse sustainability principles into a mandatory undergraduate chemical process safety course. By linking sustainability to the industrially-relevant and federally-mandated topic of process safety, we underscore its critical role in responsible engineering.
Our approach is to have senior-level undergraduate students, who have completed courses in both process safety and sustainable engineering, serve as the primary content creators. Under faculty guidance on pedagogy and accreditation requirements, these students develop transferable course modules designed to resonate with their peers. This "student-as-creator" model aims to filter content through the lens of what students find most engaging and relevant, shifting the dynamic from passive learning to active co-creation of the curriculum.
The developed modules bridge the gap between process safety and sustainability through a series of lectures, case studies, and assignments. Key topics include the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the 12 principles of green chemistry and sustainable engineering, and life-cycle assessment. These foundational concepts are applied to broader themes such as materials selection, systems thinking, and corporate social responsibility.
This initiative will hopefully serve as a replicable model for empowering students in curriculum development, ensuring that educational content remains dynamic and relevant. By embedding sustainability within the core framework of process safety, we aim to cultivate a new generation of engineers who instinctively recognize that a safe process is inherently a sustainable one.

Authors

Paige Sparkman University of Utah
Dr. Stacy K Firth http://orcid.org/0009-0003-3492-8253 University of Utah [biography]

Stacy K. Firth is an Associate Professor (Lecturer) in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Utah, where she focuses on inclusive engineering education across K–12 and undergraduate contexts. She developed a year-long engineering exploration and design course now implemented in 57 Utah high schools and a parallel college-level exploratory engineering course that supports informed major selection and serves approximately 150 students annually. She also co-developed an introductory sustainable engineering course and a senior-level chemical engineering projects laboratory that provides hands-on learning aligned with process control theory.

Dr. Firth earned her BS and MS degrees in Chemical Engineering from the University of Utah and her PhD in Chemical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. Her doctoral research focused on algorithm development for semiconductor wafer processing and resulted in two patents. Prior to joining the University of Utah, she was an Advanced Process Control Engineer at Yield Dynamics, Inc. and an Air Quality and Pollution Prevention Engineer at CH2M Hill.
Prof. Milind D. Deo The University of Utah
Dr. David R Wagner http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5074-4233 University of Utah [biography]

David R. Wagner is an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in the Department of Chemical Engineering at The University of Utah. He is also the Assistant Director of the Utah Center for Renewables, Efficiency, and Workforce (U-CREW). Previously, he was an assistant professor at San Jose State University with a focus on engineering education and sustainability. He started the Sustainable Engineering minor program and the associated course, Sustainable Engineering. In addition, he was one of three faculty members to construct and launch a new honors program at the university level to broaden participation in honors-related studies, specifically addressing concepts of sustainability.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026

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