Elsevier

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 64, 1 February 2014, Pages 136-146
Journal of Cleaner Production

Developing the curriculum for a new Bachelor's degree in Engineering for Sustainable Development

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.08.022Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We present the developing process of the Engineering for Sustainable Development degree.

  • Developing a new degree posed a number of challenges, e.g. inter-connecting courses.

  • Concept maps were used to help with course inter-connectedness and provide a systemic outlook.

  • The new degree structure was corroborated with the STAUNCH® system.

  • The combination of the tools provided a systemic approach to developing a new degree.

Abstract

With a growing interest in sustainability, a number of universities have engaged in educating the future leaders, decision makers, scientists, and engineers on how their decisions can help societies become more sustainable. This paper presents the process for developing the Bachelor's degree curriculum in Engineering for Sustainable Development at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico. The process was initiated in response to a request from top management of the university to a small committee of faculty members to prepare a draft of the degree's curriculum structure. Subsequently, a wider committee was appointed to design the courses' content and to refine the degree's structure. The process of developing a new degree posed a number of challenges, such as connectivity of courses and the curricular contribution to sustainability. These challenges were overcome by: using Concept Maps to help characterise and to overcome the challenges of inter-connecting courses by providing a systemic framework through a qualitative graphical tool titled, the ‘Sustainability Tool for Assessing UNiversities’ Curricula Holistically’ (STAUNCH®). This tool helped the faculty team to develop a quasi-quantitative approach to the courses' coverage and their individual and collective contribution to education of their students for sustainability. The two methods provided a broader, more holistic, and systemic approach when developing a degree, because it allowed assessing the needed connectivity among curriculum courses from a systemic perspective, as well as evaluating the contribution of environmental, economic, and social issues in the degree. The systematic process followed in developing this degree curriculum can help other institutions to design and implement their own sustainability curricula. This can ensure that they develop sustainability-educated and empowered students, who can be change agents in making societies more sustainable.

Introduction

The need for education about, and for, the environment and sustainable development (SD) has been recognised since the Stockholm conference in 1972 (see Abdul-Wahab et al., 2003, Thomas, 2004, UNEP., 1972, Verbitskaya et al., 2002). During the last decade an increasing number of universities have been engaging with sustainability by incorporating sustainability concepts into their systems (including curricula, research, campus operations, outreach, as well as into their assessment and reporting (Calder and Clugston, 2003, Cortese, 2003a, Lozano, 2006a). Such efforts have ranged from involvement in regional development (for example Dlouhá et al., 2013), to reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (Klein-Banai and Theis, 2013), and to leaders' perceptions of the topic (Lee et al., 2013). This has reinforced universities' commitment to sustainability, as called for by the different declaration and charters (e.g. Talloires Declaration (ULSF, 1990), the Swansea Declaration (IISD, 2003), and the Barcelona Declaration (EESD, 2004)). At the same time, leading companies have been increasingly demanding that universities more adequately prepare their graduates in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), which has become an important driver for academics to become more actively involved in developing and providing courses and curricula on these facets of interdisciplinary knowledge (see WBCSD, 2010).

In general, sustainability efforts have been focused on campus operations, research, assessment and reporting, and outreach (please refer to the Journal of Cleaner Production volume 17 issue 12, volume 18 issue 7, volume 48, and volume 49). By comparison, limited research has been done in attempting to explain the incorporation of SD in universities' curricula (Capdevila et al., 2002, Lozano and Peattie, 2011, Martin et al., 2005, Velazquez et al., 2005). Some of the main reasons for this have been: (1) ignorance or lack of awareness upon the relevance of SD (Lozano, 2006a, Velazquez et al., 2005); (2) lack of proper settings and support to effect change (Velazquez et al., 2005); (3) insecurity and threat to lack of academic credibility for teachers and professors who teach in interdisciplinary courses that are needed for ESD. (Peet et al., 2004); (4) over-crowded curricula (Abdul-Wahab et al., 2003, Chau, 2007); and (5) teachers who might prevent or support the diffusion (Barab and Luehmann, 2003).

In spite of these challenges, integrating sustainability into diverse academic curricula has been recognised to be essential for providing students with the skills and insights to help societies become more sustainable (Lozano, 2010); where sustainability science is becoming an important topic in university education under the term “metadiscipline” (Mihelcic et al., 2003).

In this context, addressing the issues raised by Agenda 21 chapter 35 (UNESCO, 1992a) and 36 (UNESCO, 1992b) and UNESCO's Engineering Initiative (UNESCO, 2012a) and Sustainable Engineering (UNESCO, 2012b) initiatives and through their own accord, some engineering schools have been pioneers in incorporating sustainable development and sustainability science into their curricula (Fenner et al., 2005, Glavic et al., 2009, Segalàs et al., 2012). This is evidenced by the efforts of faculty at Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden), Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico), Technical University of Catalonia (Spain), TU Delft (the Netherlands), and ETH Zurich (Switzerland). Other European examples can be found in The Observatory (The Alliance for Global Sustainability, 2006). In addition, among the different declarations, charters and initiatives for SD in universities, the Declaration of Barcelona, focused on engineering education for sustainable development. This declaration provides one of the most complete coverage in the crucial elements of the university system, which must be engaged in helping to catalyse the transformation to sustainable societies. (Lozano, et al., 2013).

In spite of increasing recognition of the importance and need for integrating SD and holistic perspectives into engineering curricula, the number of bachelors' degrees focussing on Engineering for Sustainable Development is still limited. This is illustrated in Table 1, which shows the engineering degrees that focus on sustainability, with 26 Bachelor's degree and 11 Master's degrees. These programs have been implemented in Australia, Europe, and the USA. Most of them focus on environmental engineering or on energy. Table 1 also shows that the social issues are not explicitly mentioned within the degree titles, which points to an implicit understanding of sustainability, in this context, as environmental sustainability.

Tecnológico de Monterrey, a leading private higher education institution in Latin America, decided to develop the BSc in Engineering for Sustainable Development (EngSD) to educate engineers who are versed in sustainable development for the Mexican and Latin American labour markets. This paper presents the process of the design and development of that EngSD degree. The paper begins with a review of SD in universities' curricula, and then a brief description of the methods used is provided. This is followed by a review of the process of developing and testing of the curriculum and overall conclusions and recommendations.

Section snippets

Sustainable development in universities' curricula

Limited research has been done in attempting to explain the incorporation of SD in universities' curricula (as discussed by Capdevila et al., 2002, Lozano and Peattie, 2011, Martin et al., 2005, Velazquez et al., 2005). Nonetheless, there is an increasing interest in the concept of developing and integrating SD into academic curricula, at all levels in practice. Some of the research on sustainability in universities' curricula include: Lozano's (2010) used a combination of systems thinking and

Data analysis methods

This section presents an overview of the data analysis methods (the concept maps (CM) and the assessment of curricula contribution to sustainability) used to help develop their EngSD curriculum.

Developing the new curriculum of Engineering in Sustainable Development degree at Tecnológico de Monterrey

This section presents the background of Tecnológico de Monterrey sustainability efforts, and the process of developing the new curriculum of the of Engineering in Sustainable Development degree at Tecnológico de Monterrey.

Discussion

As sustainability becomes a more widely accepted concept (as posited by Fenner et al., 2005, Glavic et al., 2009, Segalàs et al., 2012), a number of curricula have been developed to educate students so that they can more effectively help societies become more sustainable. Some engineering schools have been pioneers in incorporating sustainable development and sustainability science into their curricula (as posited by Fenner et al., 2005, Glavic et al., 2009, Segalàs et al., 2012).

Developing a

Conclusions

Although engineering schools have been pioneers in incorporating sustainable development into their curricula, there are still a limited number of bachelor's degrees focussing on integrating systemically the principles of engineering and sustainability. Developing a new degree curriculum is always a challenge, especially for a broad, relatively new, complex, and holistic discipline (such as sustainability).

Tecnológico de Monterrey's decision to develop the Engineering for Sustainable

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