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Session 3215

Incorporating Earth Systems Engineering Concepts throughout the Civil Engineering Degree to create the Engineer of the 21 st Century

Angela R. Bielefeldt, Bernard Amadei, R. Scott Summers University of Colorado, Dept. Civil, Environmental, & Arch. Engineering

Abstract We propose to integrate Earth Systems Engineering (ESE) into Civil Engineering (CVEN) curriculum at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) by including ESE concepts in existing courses. This will include every year of the B.S. degree and cross all of the sub-disciplines. The initiative emphasizes the role of civil, environmental and architectural engineering in society and the interaction between the built environment and natural and cultural systems. This paper describes the courses, modules, and assessment methods that will be used to evaluate the integration of ESE concepts into the Civil Engineering curriculum.

Background on Earth Systems Engineering In response to the global nature of the problems that the Earth is facing today and is likely to face in the near future, we have started a new initiative called Earth Systems Engineering (ESE) in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering (CEAE) at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Further details about the initiative can be found on the web (http://ese.colorado.edu). In general, the initiative emphasizes the role of civil, environmental and architectural engineering in society and the interaction between the built environment and natural and cultural systems.

Allenby1,2 introduced the concept of Earth Systems Engineering with reference to industrial ecology which is defined as “the multidisciplinary study of industrial systems and economic activities, and their links to fundamental natural systems.” First proposed in Japan in 1970, industrial ecology received attention in the U.S. in the late 1980s and 1990s through several studies conducted by the National Academy of Engineering on the relationship between engineering and ecological systems. It was the subject of two Gordon Conferences in 1998 and 2000 at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, NH.

The success of industrial ecology motivated the U.S. National Academy of Engineering to organize a one-day meeting on Earth System Engineering on October 24, 2000. In that meeting and in the exploratory workshop that led to that meeting, the following working definition of Earth Systems Engineering was adopted3 : “ESE is a multidisciplinary (engineering, science, social science, and governance) process of solution development that takes a holistic view of natural and human system interactions. The goal of ESE is to better understand complex, nonlinear systems of global importance and to develop the tools necessary to implement that understanding.”

As a first step in our ESE initiative, an NSF-sponsored workshop on ESE was conducted at the University of Colorado at Boulder on October 4-6, 2001. The workshop was three days in length and brought together about 90 industry, government and university participants from Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education

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Amadei, B., & Summers, R. S., & Bielefeldt, A. (2005, June), Incorporating Earth Systems Engineering Concepts Throughout The Civil Engineering Degree To Create The Engineer Of The 21 St Century Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--15544