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“Sustainability” as an Integrative Lens for Engineering Education: Initial Reflections on Four Approaches Taken at Rensselaer

Introduction

Over the past decade, the concept of “sustainability” has gained increasing attention across society at large and within many educational institutions. As the problems associated with globalized industrial production and the energy-intensive consumer economy worsen, new models for addressing human needs continue to arise. Given the central role of engineering in creating the tools of industrial production, distribution, and even consumption, it is not surprising that increased attention to sustainability is also evident among engineering students and educators. With already overloaded curricula, and little room for inserting additional requirements, the question arises as to how sustainability might be systematically integrated into engineering education. This paper considers both what models are out there for achieving that integration, and what strategies they employ in so doing. More specifically, the paper reviews key ways sustainability is conceptualized apart from engineering education initiatives and then describes four “models” for integrating sustainability into engineering education at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The first model entails a single course on the social analysis of sustainable design, taught as a social sciences course but attempting to connect to and leverage (primarily engineering) students’ disciplinary expertise and interests. The second model is a newly instituted undergraduate minor in “sustainability studies” that is offered in Science and Technology Studies (STS). This minor is targeted to students across campus and, hence, is designed to complement a variety of majors, including engineering majors. The third model is a pilot collaboration among three courses, each with a different lens on sustainable design. The fourth and final model is an effort to create a major in “sustainability studies” that would be offered by interested departments across campus, including STS, economics, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, architecture, etc. Rather than creating a single interdisciplinary degree, this model responds to existing institutional constraints by allowing each department to customize its own version of the degree.

In discussing each model below, the paper will review its basic configuration, the primary students involved and their response (as available), and instructor or developer reflections on the model’s successes and challenges. Since the activities reviewed in the paper are currently unfolding at the time of writing, tentative assessments and analysis will be offered where possible. The paper will conclude with the author’s assessment of the possibilities of and limitations to using sustainability as an integrative lens for engineering education more generally, especially insofar as it organizes students around addressing a particular, and arguably particularly important, set of problems faced by humanity in the 21st century.

Sustainability as “Intersections”

Sustainability as a concept has obvious intellectual and political roots in the environmental movement of the 1970s-1990s. The language of sustainability was popularized by attention to “sustainability development” by the World Commission on Environment and Development, informally referred to as the Brundtland Commission (after its chair), whose 1987 report, Our

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Nieusma, D. (2009, June), “Sustainability” As An Integrative Lens For Engineering Education: Initial Reflections On Four Approaches Taken At Rensselaer Paper presented at 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition, Austin, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--5245