Crafting a definition of sustainability for engineering education and applying it to assess curriculum

In order to be thoughtful practitioners towards the environment and society, engineers must be able to integrate different dimensions of sustainability—knowledge and application—in a holistic manner. This case study, conducted at the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto, focuses on the knowledge aspect of an engineer’s training by (1) creating a framework to define sustainability for engineering, (2) developing and evaluating a method for assessing the sustainability content in engineering curriculum, and (3) assessing holistic aspects by looking at connections among the sustainability pillars within the curriculum. It is challenging to define sustainability: commonly cited definitions are hard to operationalize and not sufficiently specific to engineering; no single existing framework captures all engineering concepts for sustainability. This study developed a new framework and codebook to define sustainability, starting with the three pillars of sustainability: environmental, economic and social, then adding a fourth pillar of professional responsibility, with 4–6 specific themes within each pillar. We then qualitatively analyzed the content in undergraduate engineering courses, assessing and triangulating across course descriptions, then syllabi, and finally an instructor survey. The results indicate the environmental pillar is most prevalent in the curriculum, followed by economic and social, with increasing sustainability moving from descriptions to syllabi to instructor surveys. Sustainability content varied substantially across programs, with Civil Engineering courses covering the most and Electrical Engineering the least. The results also indicate that sustainability tends to be taught by pillar rather than in a holistic manner.