(449g) Sustainability Engineering Workshop at Asee 2007 Summer School

The need to introduce sustainable development concepts to undergraduate students has become recognized to be increasingly important by industry and the general populace. One method to teach sustainable development concepts to students is to give an introduction in the first year of engineering combined with an integration of green engineering concepts throughout the curriculum. In a recent conference green engineering was defined as transforming existing engineering disciplines and practices to those that lead to sustainability. Green Engineering incorporates development and implementation of products, processes, and systems that meet technical and cost objectives while protecting human health and welfare and elevating the protection of the biosphere as a criterion in engineering solutions. From this conference 9 principles were defined and a mandate for teaching this subject was given.

This presentation will give a brief overview of examples that of the integration of green engineering materials in existing chemical engineering courses developed at either Rowan University or the University of Arizona. Many of these materials are available on-line as part of the American Society for Engineering Education/U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (ASEE/USEPA) initiative underway at Rowan University. The goal of the initiative at Rowan University is to provide materials that can be readily adapted to currently existing courses. The materials that are being provided consist of instructor guides to assist in mapping green engineering topics into various chemical engineering courses and provide homework problems, in-class examples and case studies for faculty to use. Green engineering modules prepared for core courses are available online. This is a password protected site in which students do not have access to the homework problem solutions. We believe that through this method a new generation of engineers will be trained in practicing chemical engineering within the constraints of sustainable development.

The focuses of the curriculum work at the University of Arizona are two fold. The first is a set of modules developed to incorporate sustainability concepts specifically related to the semiconductor industry into core chemical engineering courses. The second is a new method of teaching the capstone design sequence balancing integration of green design concepts into a traditional course that includes optimization, economics, safety, and plant or product design. Example problems, in-class examples and design problems will be provided.

The presentation will also give a link to the ABET criteria which will help educators examine how to use sustainable and green engineering to satisfy the environmental aspects of the ABET criteria.

ABET: Criteria 3 part c

(c) an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability, and sustainability.

ABET Criteria 8 . . . working knowledge, including safety and environmental aspects . . .