Incorporating SDGs into Chemical Engineering Courses

Education plays an important role in addressing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). As universities put more focus on the SDGs it is important to assess student’s understanding of the SDGs and how this may develop over the course of their degree. To explore SDG’s in University of New South Wales (UNSW) School of Chemical Engineering’s curriculum an online survey was developed based on knowledge, attitude, and practice survey principles. The aim of this survey was to determine students’ understanding of the SDG’s and their attitudes towards them. Additionally, whether their understanding of SDGs increased and/or their attitudes changed over the course of their studies was also explored. This survey was offered to all Chemical Engineering students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, with the results to be analysed based on stage of degree to explore the trends over the course of the students Chemical Engineering program.To further develop SDG integration in Chemical Engineering courses in this work we utilised the UNSW SDG Toolkit. This toolkit was developed to provide a platform for academics to integrate ‘SDG thinking’ across education platforms, based on the framework established by the United Nations. One Chemical Engineering course at UNSW that relates to SDGs (in particular SDG 3 Good Health and Wellbeing) is the Purple House project that runs in the common first year design course across the Faculty of Engineering. The Purple House project is aimed at developing a conceptual design to allow Purple House to find alternative water sources than groundwater in providing dialysis to indigenous communities in remote Australia. For this work the Purple House project was used as a case study for incorporating the UNSW SDG Toolkit into Chemical Engineering courses.In summary, this work has shown how SDGs can be incorporated into various courses and the impact this has on students’ understanding and attitudes to SDGs. In general, we have seen that some students consider SDGs in the courses they choose and we anticipate that students’ understanding of SDGs increase over their degree, when SDGs are incorporated into their courses.