Engineering: issues, challenges and opportunities for development ...

ENGINEERING CAPACITY: EDUCATION, TRAINING AND MOBILITYwith niche degrees versus embedding content across thedegree using a flagship and/or integrated approach.Outreach and bridgingDepartments can use newly developed or renewed curriculumto undertake recruitment and profile raising initiatives. Examplesinclude: offering immediate capacity-building for industryand government to assist them with their existing employment(i.e. through bridging courses); collaborating with otherhigher education institutions to share course offerings as analternative delivery method for specialist courses on sustainabilitytopics; offering high-school level bridging and collaborationwhere departments can interact with potential futurestudents in schools and in the local community (i.e. outreach);use of post-graduate curriculum to address potential graduateattribute gaps for final year students who may have missed outon developing sustainability related attributes in their earlierstudies.Campus integrationA whole-of-campus approach brings together the curriculumrenewal processes with campus initiatives. With many futureleaders spending time on higher education campuses, sustainabilityefforts on campus can offer significant educationalvalue. Students can gain experience with real projects that areof immediate interest and application to potential employers.In a professional environment where faculty may not haverecent industry experience, on-campus initiatives can providefaculty with practical experience in their subject matter.Concluding commentsIn order to rapidly and systematically embed sustainabilityinto engineering curriculum across all disciplines, each departmentneeds to consider the merits of all of these strategies.In doing so, the process will directly address accreditationrequirements, student enrolment and retention, reducing thedepartment’s exposure to the time lag dilemma. It will likelybe a combination of all strategies, suited to the institutional,geographic and cultural context.7.3.4Environmental educationin engineeringCheryl Desha and Charlie HargrovesEngineering has gradually evolved to include environmentaleducation in an engineer’s training. At the time of the IndustrialRevolution, an engineer’s primary concern was the applicationof science fundamentals to engineering design (i.e. appliedphysics), for example with the mechanics of motion and combustion,as well as increasing the productivity of processes.This style of engineering acknowledged the ‘environment’, butonly in as much as it provided energy, resources and physicalconstraints to construction, thus influencing design outcomes.Environmental education then evolved over the following 200years, through what could be described as a number of ‘generations’of engineering education, for example:The first generation of ‘ad hoc’ environmental educationin the mid to latter half of the twentieth century stemmedfrom the concern that some design outcomes could adverselyaffect the environment (for example with air and water pollution),following events such as the Bhopal chemical disasterin 1984, and the nuclear accident in Chernobyl in 1986, alongwith the release of seminal publications such as Silent Spring in1961, 61 Limits to Growth in 1972, 62 and Our Common Future in1987. 63 As engineering educators realized the need to addresssuch issues within their courses or programmes, content wasincluded within existing engineering degree programmes, butoften only based on the interests and pursuits of individualacademic staff.The second generation of ‘Flagship’ environmental education,from the 1980s to the end of the twentieth century, began toformalize such ad hoc activities, as engineering departmentsbegan to react to increasing staff and community interest inthe way engineering affects the environment. However, ratherthan integrating this set of knowledge and skills across andwithin the full set of engineering curriculum, the topic wasisolated and allocated a small component of the average engineeringcurriculum, and a specialist Environmental Engineeringdiscipline and programme of study evolved to secure aplace for most of the content and skills. It is conceivable thatthis placement of the topic in a separate discipline area wassymptomatic of engineering education at the time, where fullintegration of any new content was difficult in a system thattended to accept and reward individual discipline efforts (interms of administration, budgets and research funding) ratherthan integration.The third generation of ‘Integrated’ environmental educationis currently underway, as part of the transition towards engineeringeducation for sustainable development (EESD). Engineeringdepartments around the world are now beginning tounderstand that they must proactively integrate sustainabilityconsiderations into all engineering curriculum as appropriate,to address shifting regulatory, market, institutional, andgraduate expectations. With this shift already underway, itis likely that within twenty years, all engineers will graduatewith competencies in sustainable development. This poses aunique challenge for Environmental Engineering to both sup-61 Carson, R. 1962. Silent Spring, Houghton Mifflin, Boston.62 Meadows, D.H., Meadows, D.L., Randers, J. and Behrens, W. 1972. Limits to Growth: AReport for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind, Universe Books,New York.63 World Commission on Environment and Development. 1987. Our Common Future,Oxford University Press, Oxford.345