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Integrating Sustainability Principles in Undergraduate Engineering Curriculum: A Home for Environmentally Responsible Engineering

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Conference

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

San Antonio, Texas

Publication Date

June 10, 2012

Start Date

June 10, 2012

End Date

June 13, 2012

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Integrating Sustainability Across the Curriculum

Tagged Division

Environmental Engineering

Page Count

14

Page Numbers

25.811.1 - 25.811.14

DOI

10.18260/1-2--21568

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/21568

Download Count

396

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Paper Authors

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Jennifer Mueller PE P.E. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

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Corey M. Taylor Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

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Patricia Brackin Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

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Patricia Brackin is a professor of mechanical engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. She has significant industrial experience as a Designer and is a licensed Engineer. She has taught design classes, including capstone, for more than 30 years. As she became interested in sustainability, she realized that students needed to learn about sustainable practices earlier in the curriculum in order to be prepared for a capstone. In addition, she is a member of the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET and serves on the Committee for Engineering Accreditation for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

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Richard A. House Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

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Richard House is Associate Professor of English at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, with professional interests in the rhetoric of science and engineering as well as literature. As an advocate for environmental concerns, he is active in several community initiatives at Rose-Hulman and in Terre Haute. He is active in the ASEE Liberal Education/Engineering and Society Division and in the IEEE Professional Communication Society,

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Kathleen Toohey Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

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Michael S. DeVasher Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

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Rebecca Booth DeVasher Ph.D. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

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Rebecca Booth DeVasher is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. She has been teaching chemistry and working with undergraduate researchers in the field of green chemistry since the 2004-05 academic year. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Alabama, where she specialized in environmentally friendly methods for synthetic organic chemistry.

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Mark H. Minster Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

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Abstract

Integrating Sustainability Principles in Undergraduate Engineering Curriculum – a Home for Environmentally Responsible EngineeringThe first two years of many engineering curricula are saturated with foundational mathematicsand science, design skills, engineering fundamentals, and professional practices. The complexityof sustainability principles often forces its relocation later in the educational process, leading to atreatment which is too marginal to be meaningful. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology’sHome for Environmentally Responsible Engineering (HERE) is an effort to incorporatesustainability principles early in the curriculum. The HERE program integrates sustainabilitythroughout the freshman-year curriculum for a cohort of interested students acrossdisciplines. The HERE students reside together in a living-learning community during theirfreshman year and take four courses as a group, including sustainability-themed sections ofcourses in college and life skills and rhetoric and composition, as well as a humanities electivecourse on sustainability in a global context. The fourth common course is the introduction todesign course, where the HERE cohort will be able to implement a real sustainable engineeringproject on the Rose-Hulman campus, courtesy of a grant from Procter & Gamble. The goal ofthe common first-year classes and the shared residence hall is to provide the students a model formaking sustainability a foundational part of their engineering education and practice. Byassessing student knowledge of sustainability principles at the beginning and end of the freshmanyear, the effectiveness of the program is evaluated to show that the HERE program helpsstudents learn to view sustainable design methodologies and awareness of the triple bottom lineas integral to their understanding of the profession of engineering. Future plans are beingdeveloped to continue the program past the freshman year.

Mueller, J., & Taylor, C. M., & Brackin, P., & House, R. A., & Toohey, K., & DeVasher, M. S., & DeVasher, R. B., & Minster, M. H. (2012, June), Integrating Sustainability Principles in Undergraduate Engineering Curriculum: A Home for Environmentally Responsible Engineering Paper presented at 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, San Antonio, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--21568

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