Seattle, Washington
June 14, 2015
June 14, 2015
June 17, 2015
978-0-692-50180-1
2153-5965
NSF Grantees Poster Session
21
26.118.1 - 26.118.21
10.18260/p.23459
https://strategy.asee.org/23459
622
Denise Wilson is a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her research interests in engineering education focus on the role of self-efficacy, belonging, and other non-cognitive aspects of the student experience on engagement, success, and persistence and on effective methods for teaching global issues such as those pertaining to sustainability.
Rachel completed her Bachelor’s degree at the University of Wyoming in International Studies and Spanish, spending a semester in Guatemala interviewing business owners and local residents in Antigua as part of a project to understand conflicts over the growing ecotourism industry. She has worked with the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington on projects focusing on social acceptability of biofuels, engaging stakeholders in forest management issues, and surveys on public values of cultural ecosystem services.
Dr. Allendoerfer is a Research Scientist in the College of Engineering at the University of Washington.
MJ Kim is a Ph.D. student in Educational Leadership, Policy & Organizations Studies (Higher Education) at the University of Washington College of Education. She has been involved in a 5-institution, 5-year, NSF-funded project that investigated to understand the impact of belonging and other connections to community on academic engagement for undergraduates in science, math, and engineering (STEM). Broad range of activities related to the research questions at hand included data collection (surveys, interviews, focus groups, and classroom observations), analysis of the data(quantitative, qualitative, and mixed), assessment and revision of research design, data presentation, and supervising undergraduates who are involved in the research team. Her current research interest revolves around assessing institutional strategies to embrace global consciousness among undergraduate students majoring in STEM disciplines.
A Sustainability Toolbox for Engineers: Exploring how Students are likely to Engage in Sustainability EducationCurrent approaches to teaching sustainability in undergraduate engineering programs tend to focus on teaching ABOUT sustainability, where largely traditional techniques are used to transmit concepts, facts, and information between teacher and student. Teaching FOR sustainability is similar to education that is FOR the environment where students gain knowledge, values, attitudes, commitment, and skills needed to protect the planet. With sustainability added to the mix, this teaching is done in such a way that viable solutions meet present needs without compromising those of future generations. Student attitudes toward and preconceptions about sustainability can affect the success of both teaching approaches. Although the central goal in our study is to explore best practices to teach FOR sustainability, our preliminary results are likely to apply to all those who teach concepts of sustainability to engineering students in their courses. In our preliminary work, we have interviewed three students in engineering (freshman, junior, senior) who pre-‐selected for the interview based on their interests in sustainability and conducted three focus groups, consisting of freshman through seniors, who are a random representation of the whole engineering student body. These focus groups were conducted in two classes: (a) a junior level class in Sustainable Design for the Developing World; and (b) a senior level class in Sensors and Sensor Systems. From this small sample size of 25 students at a single institution, we find a surprising range of sophistication regarding how to students view sustainability in terms of both their personal lives and their careers as engineers. We also find themes that emerge independent of sophistication of thought regarding sustainability. For example, a majority of students feel powerless to impact sustainability in their careers and lives, and often hold a cynical view of the prospects of technology becoming more sustainable. This cynical view holds that capitalism will stand in the way of any meaningful progress to make technology more sustainable for future generations, as corporations are unlikely to deviate from profit-‐oriented motives and sustainability-‐motives are frequently at odds with those quests for profit. Students are also more able and more willing to engage in deeper discussions of sustainability when the topics hit close to home. Short product life cycles associated with cell phones are more likely to generate animated interest from students than sustainability challenges in developing communities thousands of miles away. To some extent, this is expected, but it offers some challenges in covering the spectrum of global sustainability in an equitable and authentic way in the undergraduate engineering experience. Our poster will look at these interview and focus group responses in the context of how to structure tools for teaching FOR sustainability in engineering curricula.
Wilson, D., & Roberts, R., & Allendoerfer, C., & Kim, M. J. (2015, June), A Sustainability Toolbox for Engineers: Exploring How Students Are Likely to Engage in Sustainability Education Paper presented at 2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Seattle, Washington. 10.18260/p.23459
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