Faculty Perspectives on Sustainability Integration in Undergraduate Civil and Environmental Engineering Curriculum

Abstract

Engineering courses that incorporate sustainability provide students with tools to solve the pressing problems of our future and a meaningful way to connect with their education through introduction of the global, societal, and environmental issues in engineering. Despite this, disconnects exist between engineering programs across the country in their ability to merge sustainability into the schools’ undergraduate curricula. Engineering faculty are integrating sustainability into curriculum, but many struggle with the best methods to update curriculum and to overcome the barriers to teaching these emerging topics. This paper elucidates and explores faculty perceptions about the importance of sustainability in civil and environmental engineering (CEE) education as well as methods for and barriers to its incorporation in CEE courses. Specifically, it presents results of a survey administered to faculty at two institutions as well as to attendees at an Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) preconference workshop. Findings show that most sustainability content is currently taught in the later years of undergraduate students’ education while most faculty continue to employ traditional lecture-based teaching methods.