Sustainable Engineering Education: Translating Myth to Mechanism

摘要

For the past several decades, engineering education has been in a constant state of revision, although fundamental change has proven difficult. The recent interest in "sustainable engineering" offers yet another opportunity - perhaps a mandate - to change engineering education in ways that will create new and powerful professionals. But if this promise is to be achieved, it requires that engineering professors, and the engineering establishment, develop a more sophisticated understanding of what "sustainable engineering" means, how it can be made real in the classroom, and what changes in content and pedagogy are implied. The good news is that "sustainable engineering" raises the possibility that good engineering and appropriately designed technology systems can play an important part in supporting more socially, culturally, and environmentally appropriate technologies. For these interested in the nascent field of earth systems engineering and management, it raises the further possibility that engineers can be educated to help design, understand, and rationally and ethically manage, the complex integrated human/natural/built systems that characterize what scientists increasingly refer to as the Anthropocene - roughly speaking, the Age of Humans (Allenby, 2005a; Nature, 2003). It must be recognized from the beginning, however, that this is not an uncontroversial possibility. For many activists, the idea of "sustainable engineering" appears oxymoronic if not duplicitous; an effort to make what must always be an environmentally problematic activity, the creation of new products and processes, new buildings, and new infra-structures, seem to be environmentally acceptable. Such debates are important in helping to create understanding and solidify values, and must be understood by those who intend to teach sustainable engineering. They are, however, of less benefit to the working technologist or engineer, tasked with designing particular artifacts or solving specific problems. While often sympathetic to the goals of environmental and social preferability, the challenge for such professionals is how in practice to enable creation of better engineering and better technology; for academics, the corresponding responsibility is to be able to teach professionals how to do so. This is a complex challenge, but by no means an impossible one.