(59f) Integrating Sustainability across the Chemical Engineering Curriculum

The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development represents a global commitment to addressing the world's most pressing economic, social, and environmental challenges with 17 goals. Specifically, goal 12 looks to address sustainable consumption and production patterns that have many ties to the chemical engineering field. Therefore, teaching chemical engineers to consider and evaluate the impacts of their designs on the environment, individuals, and society is imperative to achieve this Sustainable Development Goal. This need has become so important that ABET has even began to include these considerations in Student Outcome 2, which currently includes the “...consideration of public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors.” In this presentation we will discuss how chemical engineering educators from Columbia and Northeastern Universities, two large, private, R1 universities, have introduced and engaged students in considering sustainability. We combined elements from Engineering for One Planet Framework, the Professional Social Responsibility Development Model, and Global Competencies frameworks into three compact Sustainability-in-Action Elements (SAEs):

• Sustainability Awareness: Students will be able to describe and appreciate different cultures, values, and perspectives; the sources of pollution, emissions, and climate change; and the need for more sustainable practices.
• Evaluating Impact: Students will be able to determine the impacts on society and the environment of an engineering action.
• Taking Action: Students will be able to apply their sustainability awareness and ability to evaluate impact to design an engineering solution that creates positive environmental and social value.

We collected quantitative and qualitative data from the sustainability-informed student learning objectives in three courses–a Material & Energy Balances course for sophomores, a senior capstone design course, and a senior elective on green chemical engineering. We will demonstrate how students learned and applied sustainability values through their engineering design projects in these courses. Data of the self-assessed knowledge from these learning outcome surveys will inform how well the courses addressed sustainability topics, the outcomes for ABET Student Outcome 2, and how the students felt about the applications of these topics in the courses. The following questions will be addressed: (1) How can chemical engineering educators better address sustainability topics in chemical engineering courses? (2) How could chemical engineering educators implement sustainability topics throughout the chemical engineering curriculum to improve students understanding of the need and ability to apply these topics?