This project aims to serve the national interest by improving engineering students? ability to create sustainable and resilient engineering designs. Industry, government, the public, professional associations, and accreditation organizations are increasingly demanding that engineers consider sustainability and resiliency during the design process. Sustainable designs balance economic, ecological, and societal needs by being responsive to community impact, public health, and the environment. Resilient designs are durable: in adverse situations, they continue to function, resist damage, and recover quickly. This project is driven by the need for engineers who can design solutions that maximize societal benefit while minimizing costs and environmental impacts. In other words, the next generation of engineers needs the skills to produce sustainable and resilient solutions to engineering design problems. To help students develop these skills, the project plans to develop a set of active learning modules that integrate sustainable and resilient design concepts. These modules will be deployed in existing upper and lower division courses across multiple engineering degree programs. This project has the potential to help equip the next generation of engineering professionals with the ability to create design solutions that benefit the economy, environment, and society.
The goal of this project is to transform undergraduate engineering education by instilling sustainable and resilient design concepts in electrical, materials, mechanical, and civil engineering, and in construction management curricula. A new junior-level interdisciplinary engineering design course will be developed that emphasizes the importance of these design concepts through project-based learning and that advances the used of sustainable and resilient design in multiple disciplines. The project team will develop and implement active learning modules for engineering design courses. The project will address the following research questions: (1) How do active learning modules focused on sustainable and resilient design affect students? knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors towards these topics and their relevance to professional engineering practice? (2) How well do students understand and manage the trade-offs associated with designing for sustainability and resiliency in engineering? (3) How do approaches to sustainable and resilient design vary by engineering discipline? Guided by the Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviors conceptual model, the study will use a mixed-methods approach to collect and analyze qualitative and quantitative data to address the research questions. The results of the project will be disseminated through an online repository that will include active learning modules, a strategic plan for implementation, and research results demonstrating the modules? effectiveness. In addition, a conference on sustainability and resiliency will be hosted to provide a venue for colleagues from multiple institutions to share their curricular activities and research. This project is funded by the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Education and Human Resources program, which supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
