Developing and Teaching a Course in “Applied Sustainability and Public Health in Civil Engineering Design” at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

Abstract

This paper presents the writer’s pedagogical development and delivery of a new undergraduate course in applied sustainability and public health in civil engineering design in the Department of Civil Engineering at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. This innovative course introduces undergraduate civil engineering students to methods in sustainability indicators, life-cycle analysis, environmental input-output analysis, and risk analysis to evaluate the environmental impacts and public health impacts of civil engineering design. The paper discusses the learning objectives and course themes of preventive design, multicriteria decision making, and systems-level analysis. The course syllabus and the design project in which students were asked to design a water transmission pipeline and evaluate its environmental impacts are discussed in detail. An overview of the pedagogical methods and student evaluation tools employed in the course is given. An evaluation of learning outcomes and student impressions of the course suggest that topics on design for environment, sustainable development in an international context, and the interface between sustainability, engineering, and policy development should be included in future editions of the course.