Conference Agenda

Our research focuses on embedding sustainability in the engineering curriculum in ways that are efficient, coherent and inclusive. An important strand of work within this wider remit is finding suitable approaches for promoting collaboration between institutions and academics and advance the understanding of what ‘sustainability’ means in engineering education in the first place, by producing reliable data that can inform our future practice, leading to institutional change. In this paper, we report and discuss the organisation and the findings of a series of inter-institutional conversations that took place during two in person workshops, with the central theme of embedding sustainability in the engineering curriculum, held at a University in the UK during spring 2022 and the online meetings and interactions that followed. These meetings provided an opportunity for engineering educators from universities in the southwest of England to share experiences from their current practice when teaching about and for sustainability. The workshops explored the feasibility of setting up of an online platform for sharing teaching and learning resources and techniques, all relating to sustainability issues in an engineering education context. They also spoke to the importance of collaboration and cooperation.

A previous conference paper with case study report findings began this research to be of use to and inform the International Association for Continuing Engineering Education (IACEE) institutions and its membership on the importance of sustainability is embedded in all engineering education courses from the beginning to the end of the Degree. This research project aims to continue to qualitatively research and investigate the extent to which and how Engineering Learning Curricula (ELC) incorporate and embed sustainability as central to the future work practice of all engineers. This research project now takes a more comprehensive and longer-term approach to be of ongoing use to all engineering education faculties and institutions, corporate and government policy development, and Continuing Engineering Education (CEE) providers. We used the digital platform of Sustainability Education &Research IN Action (SERinA), the IACEE Global Initiative, as a future database reporting on best ELC practices in all forms of Engineering Education and post-CEE practice. IACEE’s academic engineering member organisations, member institutions, and other engineering institutions outside of the IACEE will be incorporated in the long term into this research project. Initially, information will be obtained via each institution’s external website and its academics for this research project and this report paper. This project will also, in the future, seek to interview graduate engineering students on how effective their degrees were in embedding sustainable learning understandings useful in their post-graduate world of engineering practice.

The aim of this paper is to assess the extent to which United Kingdom (UK) universities are incorporating sustainability into their engineering curricula. To achieve this, data from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) and university websites were analysed using a text mining approach. The findings reveal that UK higher education providers are gradually increasing their offerings of Sustainable Engineering (SE) courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The most prominent sustainability themes integrated into engineering curricula are energy, design, and construction. Furthermore, the analysis of courses and their modules shows that 50% of UK postgraduate sustainable engineering courses contain between 25% and 50% sustainable engineering content. In contrast, almost one-third of traditional engineering courses that incorporate sustainability contain between 10% and 25% of sustainable engineering subjects. The study also examined the SE courses and their module descriptions to identify gaps and how UK higher education providers are contributing towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The most dominant SDGs addressed in the UK SE courses analysed are SDG 7 Affordable and Clean Energy, SDG 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities, and SGD 13 Climate Action.

This paper provides valuable insights into the integration of sustainability into engineering education and its alignment with the SDGs.

Today’s complex global challenges call upon a different pedagogical approach to higher education that is fit for the purpose of preparing our students not only for the world of work, but the work of the world – to paraphrase the words of Sir Jonathan Porritt. Indeed, we can and should be preparing students for both, as it is through their professions they will arguably be able to have the most positive impact on these global challenges. Consequently, re-focusing teaching on ways of thinking, being and practicing, the so-called ‘head, hearts and hands framework’, should be done in a way that actively stretches students beyond the comfort of their disciplinary subject boundaries and skill sets.

This paper will present the University of Strathclyde’s practice and experience of establishing their award winning Vertically Integrated Projects for Sustainable Development (VIP4SD) programme, an exemplar of ‘how to’ embed Research-Based Education for Sustainable Development in undergraduate curricula.

The programme currently involves 25 student-centred research projects consisting of almost 200 undergraduate students. These projects are not only of students from different disciplines working on common challenges, but also different year groups also – that is to say they are both horizontally and vertically integrated.

This paper will show how VIP4SD develops key sustainability competences in engineering (and other) students within the context of their core discipline; offering a more authentic real-world, experiential and potentially transformational learning experience, that can inspire, educate and equip our students to work collaboratively, now and in the future, in the pursuit of the global goals.