What do Engineering Undergraduates need to Know, Think or Feel to ...

What do Engineering Undergraduates need to Know, Think or Feel to Understand Sustainability? A L Carew and C A Mitchell Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Sydney Sydney, Australia

The Engineering profession’s key stakeholders (government, industry and professional bodies) are driving a paradigm shift in engineering – from ‘development engineering’ to ‘sustainable development engineering’. In response to this shift, the Institution of Engineers, Australia has updated the accreditation procedure for undergraduate degree courses, and an understanding of sustainability is now a condition of graduation. This represents a new challenge to engineering educators and begs the question: What do engineering undergraduates need to know think or feel to understand sustainability? In this paper we have addressed this question by reviewing the literature on the future of engineering education and/or practice. Our review identified three ethical principles (fairness, responsibility and awareness) and four interdependence principles (systems thinking, uncertainty and complexity, impacts, and limits and elasticity) which were described by numerous authors as being fundamental for an undergraduate student seeking to understanding sustainability. In this paper we provide a full description of each of these principles. We also identified three important points of philosophical tension between some of the fundamental tenants of traditional engineering practice and the requirements of sustainable engineering. These are the tension between the engineering ‘domain of operation’ and sustainability’s requirement for broadening and inclusion; between the requirement for objectivity and recognition of uncertainty, complexity and ‘multiple goalposts’; and between the ethical bases of the business model of engineering professionalism and the social-contract model. Consideration of these points may help to clarify some of the underlying assumptions which could hinder or impoverish the process of integrating sustainability and engineering curricula.

1. INTRODUCTION Historically, the engineering profession has responded to changing environmental, social or economic pressures by adjusting its accustomed approach. David Thom [1] and others [2,3] have surmised the engineering profession is currently under significant pressure to adjust its approach, and that the adjustments required are so fundamental that they are driving a paradigm shift. They predict that this paradigm shift will strongly reorient the engineering profession, from 'development engineering' to 'sustainable development engineering' [1]. The paradigm shift to sustainable engineering has substantial support amongst key stakeholders in the engineering profession. Governmental policy and legislative reform is supporting the paradigm shift [4,5,6] and the industrial operating environment has changed as a result of pressure for increased sustainability. Evidence that industry has responded (or has been compelled to respond) to this pressure can be seen in the increasingly routine use of such sustainability-related tools as: environmental management, risk assessment, hazard analysis, quality assurance, due diligence, environmental and sustainability reporting, and community consultation [7,8]. Australian operators who are leading the shift in terms of corporate reporting include Rio Tinto, Broken Hill Proprietary limited (BHP), Shell and Western Mining Corporation (WMC). WMC has produced an annual environment progress report since 1994/95 and as part of that process is committed to four eco-efficiency targets (CO2, SO2, water and energy). This commitment and the company's progress have earned plaudits from Environment Australia, the United Nations Environment Program and stockbrokers J B Ware [9]. BHP have published an annual environment and community report since 1999. The 2000 report was based on a triple-bottom-line approach encompassing financial, environmental and social performance appraisal [10]. Engineering professional bodies are also supporting the shift towards sustainability [1,11,12]. The Institution of Engineers, Australia (IEAust) has published a number of documents that describe the professional Engineer's sustainability obligations (eg. DRAFT National Competency Standard 2000 [13];

6th World Congress of Chemical Engineering Melbourne, Australia 23-27 September 2001 Code of Ethics 1994 [8]). IEAust has also overhauled the accreditation process for undergraduate engineering degree courses. The new process is outcome-focused, and includes a list of graduate attributes. The attributes require that a student attain the following, by completion of undergraduate studies [14]: 1. Ability to apply knowledge of basic science and engineering fundamentals; 2. Ability to communicate effectively, not only with engineers but also with the community at large; 3. In-depth technical competence in at least one engineering discipline; 4. Ability to undertake problem identification, formulation and solution; 5. Ability to utilise a systems approach to design and operational performance; 6. Ability to function effectively as an individual and in multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural teams, with the capacity to be a leader or manager as well as an effective team member; 7. Understanding of the social, cultural, global and environmental responsibilities of the professional engineer, and the need for sustainable development; 8. Understanding of the principles of sustainable design and development; 9. Understanding of professional and ethical responsibilities and commitment to them; and 10. Expectation of the need to undertake life-long learning, and capacity to do so. The new accreditation procedure, including attributes 7 and 8, which mandate sustainability learning, is now in place. This means that Australian engineering faculties accredited by IEAust are now responsible for assisting their undergraduate students to understand sustainability. This requirement provides a significant challenge for Australian engineering academics, few of whom have formal training in, or first-hand experience of sustainable engineering. As a result, many engineering academics are asking: What do engineering undergraduates need to know, think or feel to understand sustainability? In this paper we have addressed the above question by reviewing the literature on the future of engineering education and/or practice. The review relied on fifteen papers, eleven of which were written by practicing engineering academics, the remainder being from two conferences which envisioned the future of engineering education [15,16] and from two groups charged with overcoming barriers to the integration of sustainability and curricula [17,18]. In essence, the literature we reviewed raised a number of key philosophical questions which we present in Section 2, prior to addressing the main question - What do engineering undergraduates need to know think or feel to understand sustainability? – in Section 3. 2. SUSTAINABLE ENGINEERING PRACTICE Our review of the literature on the future of engineering education highlighted three broad areas of philosophical tension between some of the fundamental tenants of traditional engineering practice and the requirements of sustainable engineering. These are the tension between the engineering ‘domain of operation’ and sustainability’s requirement for broadening and inclusion; between the requirement for objectivity and recognition of uncertainty, complexity and ‘multiple goalposts’; and between the ethical bases of the business model of engineering professionalism and the social-contract model. Domain of Operation The majority of authors suggested that sustainability required a degree of broadening of the skill base or outlook of engineers [2,18,19,20,21]. This prescription raised a question about the existence and placement of the boundaries to engineering activity (ie. What is the nature and purpose of engineering?). We will not address this question here, suffice to say that the author/s’ perceptions of the engineering ‘domain of operation’ appeared to be closely linked with the scale and direction of each author/s’ prescription for education for more sustainable engineering. For example, Boyle [19] who saw engineering as involvement in ‘the design, construction, management and operation of…industrial and municipal infrastructure’, prescribed a greater emphasis on ‘environmental ethics and concepts’, ‘some understanding of other disciplines’ and ‘knowledge of management and law’. In contrast, Holt [20] described a future domain of engineering operation as one in which the engineer constructs and maintains society’s ‘technological cloth’, and participates fully in decisions about how that cloth is used. He goes on to describe engineering education for sustainability as a conglomerate of the physical and social sciences, united by professional good practice, consideration of the societal context of technological action, open to the views of others, and imbued with an ethical commitment to ‘do the right thing as well as to do the thing right.’ This relationship between perception of domain of operation and views on what constitutes more sustainable engineering has important, practical ramifications. It suggests that the extent to which engineers and engineering academics

6th World Congress of Chemical Engineering Melbourne, Australia 23-27 September 2001 will incorporate sustainability into their professional activities will be influenced by their own schema of the boundaries to engineering activity. This kind of relationship has been empirically demonstrated outside the discipline of engineering (reviewed by Prosser and Trigwell [22]), and has been shown to have a profound influence on the outcome of professional endeavour. A further practical question arising from variation in assumptions about the boundaries to engineering activity revolves around the concept of inclusion. That is, whether the boundaries denote a zone that is the exclusive preserve of engineers or that includes non-engineers and/or non-‘experts’. The sustainability principle of inclusion, discussed in Section 3, strongly challenges the notion of an exclusive preserve. Objectivity and Uncertainty The literature review revealed some tension between visions of sustainable engineering practice and traditional engineering’s enthusiasm for the notion of objectivity. Two of the philosophical assumptions which sit alongside the notion of absolute objectivity are: the idea that a humanly constructed activity (eg. engineering) can be value-free, and the notion that to any given problem, there is one right answer. Both of these assumptions were contested in the literature under review. Taylor [23] explicitly refuted the idea of engineering activity as value-free by highlighting the role of context, and describing how individual engineer’s values and attitudes influenced decision-making. An acceptance of the role of values and attitudes in decision-making would be an important step towards greater transparency, flexibility and inclusiveness in engineering decision-making. These align with sustainable engineering more closely than does the popular fiction of value-free decision-making. A number of the authors under review pointed out that future engineering activity must adequately consider the broader environmental, societal, economic and temporal context within which it takes place [2,18,20,24] and must answer to an increasingly broad array of stakeholders [3,23]. These two factors suggest that the sustainable engineer must become comfortable with the uncertainty inherent in dealing with complex systems and with the demands of the multiple and (potentially) mobile goalposts set by different stakeholders. These two factors mean that sustainable engineering requires movement away from the notion of one right answer towards more flexible decision outcomes. Models of Professionalism The point of tension identified here appeared to centre around the raison d'être of the engineering profession. This question was examined by Cywinski [11] who wrote that ‘[the] accumulation of goods and services is not sufficient for the realization of human happiness.’ When applied directly to the engineering profession, this highlights a fundamental tension between the ethical bases of the two models of professionalism which are current in the profession. Taylor [23] describes these as ‘the business model’ which emphasises loyalty to the employer and the use of engineering professional status for personal economic advantage, and ‘the social-contract model’ in which professional practice is about serving the common good rather than accumulating personal power. The description of sustainability provided by many of the authors under review suggested that adherence to the social contract model would be more compatible with sustainable engineering. It is interesting to note that IEAust's Code of Ethics [8] appears to be based on the socialcontract model and that the list of graduate attributes required under IEAust's new accreditation process [14] excludes a specific reference to operating within economic constraints. Our intention in raising the preceding philosophical points is to point out that, while the philosophical questions do not need to be answered prior to the integration of sustainability and engineering curriculum, consideration of these points may help to clarify some of the underlying assumptions which could hinder or impoverish the process. 3. KEY SUSTAINABILITY PRINCIPLES The key sustainability principles we derived from the literature are highly inter-related and fall loosely into two categories – ethical principles and interdependence principles. There is much content overlap between the principles and this serves to strongly illustrate the complex, inter-connected nature of sustainability. In deriving the key sustainability principles we have excluded what we would call ‘means’. The term ‘means’ describes the tools (eg. Life Cycle Analysis, eco-labelling, ISO 14001), specific examples (eg. global warming, depletion of biodiversity), and indicators of sustainability that an academic might use as teaching aids. We have also excluded preordained outcomes which were listed by some of the authors under review. The term ‘outcomes’ describes both holistic vision statements intended to encapsulate the aim or end-point of sustainability like ‘economic growth that is in harmony with the environment and related to improvements in quality of life’ [16], and more specific technical outcomes such as ‘emulating nature in the production and use of resources’ [16]. Again, this is because the current review focuses on identifying the fundamental

6th World Congress of Chemical Engineering Melbourne, Australia 23-27 September 2001 principles or beliefs that students need in order to create their own sustainable outcomes in the increasingly broad and complex range of contexts in which engineers work [18]. Ethical principles Fairness Prescriptions for a belief in, or commitment to, fairness were fairly homogenous across authors. Authors mandated an understanding of and belief in equity as a central part of this sustainability principle. Broadly speaking, equity included intergenerational equity [17] and intra-generational equity [16,17], but did not extend to inter-species equity as described by Nieto [25]. Specific manifestations of fairness or equity listed by the authors included: poverty reduction [16], access to social justice [17,24], and inclusion [3]. Like many of the manifestations of each sustainability principle, inclusion operates on a number of levels. At the most fundamental level, inclusion could be a requirement that students appreciate and accept the role of society (as manifested by a myriad of individual stakeholders) in guiding or dictating engineering activity. At a less fundamental level, inclusion would allow not only for consideration of the values and beliefs of others [20,24,26] but also for input from professionals and laypersons from different disciplinary backgrounds [2,21]. This notion of interdisciplinarity recurs in a number of the sustainability principles listed here. Responsibility Many of the authors under review stated that engineering students should be taught to take professional and/or social and/or personal responsibility [1,17,20,26,27]. The prescriptions under review contained a great variety of statements which could be interpreted as manifestations of ‘taking responsibility’. They included: supporting equity, justice and social cohesion [17]; minimising ‘ecological footprints’ [18]; having appropriate attitudes [1]; having respect for the values of others [17]; honest broking of technical information during decision-making [2,3]; assessing the implications and likely impacts of decisions [24,27]; good governance [20]; and a commitment to human development [20] or well-being [24]. The scope of these descriptions suggests that ‘taking responsibility’ may be shorthand for a wide range of values-based mores held by the engineering culture. The prescription for commitment to human well-being, for example, is clearly values-based. Nieto [25] argues strongly against this anthropocentric view and promotes the alternative notion of whole-ecosystem responsibility. Further clarification of the principle of responsibility would likely assist in its implementation. Awareness We have used the term awareness to express a group of different prescriptions which all related to the use of reflexivity [28]. The authors seemed to be prescribing a form of personal quality control, through reflection on one’s own motives and reasoning. These included awareness in terms of understanding the role of one’s own beliefs and values in decision-making processes [18,23], the use of critical thinking in decision-making [17] and self-awareness in ones interactions with others [3]. Interdependence Principles Systems thinking Nearly all of the expert prescriptions for sustainability learning specified that students learn ‘systems thinking’, appreciate the pervasive influence of interdependence, or practise ‘holistic thinking’. We interpret these specifications as intending a very similar outcome – that students develop an awareness of, and appreciation for the multiplicity of factors which influence and are influenced by any engineering decision. Some authors referred directly to systems or life cycle thinking [2,18], interdependence [18] or holism [1,24], and some described specific aspects or manifestations of systems thinking which were particularly relevant to engineering, examples included: the relationships between population, consumption, culture, social equity, health and the environment [18]; and selection of technology appropriate to the social and environmental context within which it would be used [3]. Related to the requirement for students to master systems thinking was a propensity for ‘interdisciplinarity’ or ‘broadening’ in undergraduate engineering education. The majority of expert prescriptions called for students to either be inured to working with people from other disciplinary backgrounds [21], or to develop skills from a broad range of non-traditional disciplinary areas like biology, history, economics, politics, and sociology [15,18,21]. Prausnitz [21] explained that the increasingly complex nature of contemporary engineering problems has made the ‘lone specialist’ approach largely redundant. The successful application of a systems orientation to engineering problems requires access to a wide range of specialist technical and ‘non-technical’ knowledge, and the ability to integrate that knowledge [21,29].

6th World Congress of Chemical Engineering Melbourne, Australia 23-27 September 2001 Uncertainty and Complexity Only three of the authors reviewed called explicitly for understanding of uncertainty and complexity [1,17,26]. This requirement relates strongly to the preceding requirement for systems thinking as the application of a systems approach requires the ability to use judgement in the face of uncertainty, and to understand how interdependence leads to complexity, which often results in heightened uncertainty. Donald Schön [28] states that the ability to work with uncertainty (in the form of incomplete or conflicting information) is an essential element of professional competence. HE21 [17] went further to dictate that students should develop an appreciation of and inclination to apply the precautionary principle [30] in response to uncertainty and complexity. Impacts This principle was embedded in the prescriptions of the majority of authors under review, and is implicit in or related to most of the sustainability principles discussed here. This prescription requires that students understand the environmental, social and economic implications of their decisions. The word implications here stands for ‘likely impacts’. The principle of impacts was expressed explicitly as: having an understanding of the legacy of past practices and their impacts [15,17,18]; assessing the ecological footprint of different options [18]; understanding the context within which decisions would be implemented [24,27]; and taking different spatial, perspectival and temporal positions in decision-making (eg. short-term, technical, local and long-term, societal, global) [26,31]. Crofton [24], HE21 [17] and Cortese [18] extended this principle to require that students have the inclination (or values set) to take active steps to minimise the negative impacts of their decisions. Limits and Elasticity Related to the requirement that students understand the impacts of their decisions, is the need to understand and respect system constraints. Some authors described this principle by referring to limits, for example, ecological system boundaries [2] or the finite nature of earth’s resources and assimilative capacity [31]. Others referred to the need for biological, cultural and economic diversity [17]. The need for diversity is less a reference to systems constraints, than a prerequisite for system health or resilience [31]. We have described this as the principle of ‘elasticity’. The principle of elasticity rests on the notion that depletion of system diversity undermines the inherent ability of systems to absorb and recover from, or adapt to, perturbation. 4. CONCLUDING REMARKS The above description of the learning required for undergraduate engineers to ‘understand sustainability’ is comprehensive and may seem daunting. Crofton [24] points out, however, that policy documents of the engineering profession in Australia (eg. IEAust Codes of Ethics 1994 [8]) and elsewhere are well-aligned with the requirements of sustainability. It is also apparent that some of the learning described above is already included in the undergraduate experience at many universities (eg. experience with uncertainty during capstone design courses), and some of it may be a prerequisite to individual professional accreditation (eg. IEAust DRAFT National Competency Standard 2000 [13]). Based on the Williams Review [32] and IEAust’s Changing the Culture [33], however, it is unlikely that the existing curriculum at many universities would satisfactorily cover all of the principles described in the above prescription for sustainability learning. Our review highlighted tension between some of the fundamental tenants of traditional engineering practice and the requirements of sustainable engineering. It appears highly likely that successful integration of sustainability and engineering curriculum will rest, at the very least, on an awareness of the underlying assumptions and contradictions within the engineering profession at which these tensions have their source. REFERENCES 1. Thom, D. (1996) ‘Sustainability and Education: To Sink-or to Swim?’ European Journal of Engineering Education, 21(4), 347-352. 2. Mitchell, C. (1999) ‘Integrating Sustainability in Chemical Engineering Practice and Education: concentricity and its consequences’, Transactions of the Institution for Chemical Engineering, 78(B), 237242. 3. Clift, R. (1998) ‘Engineering for the Environment: The New Model Engineer and her Role’, Transactions of the Institution for Chemical Engineering, 76(B), 151-160. 4. ISF (2000) The Institute for Sustainable Futures, UTS June 2000 newsletter http://www.isf.uts.edu.au/ August 2000. 5. SEDA (2000) Energy Smart Homes Media Release 3rd August 2000 http://www.seda.nsw.gov.au

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6th World Congress of Chemical Engineering Melbourne, Australia 23-27 September 2001