This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
This engineering education research award to Purdue University will employ researchers to develop a conceptual framework for assessing sustainability knowledge gained by undergraduate engineering students and to explore elements of a sustainability concept inventory. Although plans to integrate sustainability throughout engineering curricula are widely supported, there are few resources available to measure the efficacy of such efforts. The field and practice of engineering education will benefit from the development of a rigorous conceptual framework to allow for grounded assessment of burgeoning sustainability curriculum initiatives. The bridging of expert and novice perspectives on sustainability will inform the creative investigation of both, i.e., it will refine expert conceptions and clarify novice misconceptions. By highlighting the explicit link between engineering, sustainability and society, this work will serve to highlight the broader dimensions of the engineering profession. As a result, if engineering becomes more attractive to a wider fraction of the population, there would be an expected increase in number of engineering graduates prepared for challenging work in sustainability.
