CONTEXTUALIZING ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY IN DESIGN ENGINEERING CURRICULA

Consideration of environmental sustainability is signifi-cantly altering the nature of the mechanical design process. This necessitates integration of sustainability related learning content in design engineering curricula. Although various frameworks for teaching sustainable design exist, a survey conducted among practicing student engineers shows the presence of significant knowledge gaps. To this end, we propose a problem-based frame-work for contextualizing sustainability assessment within design engineering curricula. Our framework makes it possible for em-bedding sustainability related concepts within traditional engi-neering courses and promotes discovery learning among stu-dents by means of design exploration. We illustrate our approach using a shape synthesis task that integrates environmental as-sessment into design by constraining the decision space for do-main specific variables. Results from a user survey for analyz-ing the effects of our framework show its ability to promote both awareness and applicability of sustainable design concepts as well as its potential for use in existing engineering curricula.