Permeating Sustainability and Resiliency Concepts into Civil Engineering Curricula

Sustainable infrastructure balances economic, ecological, and societal needs by being responsive to community health and the environment. Resilient infrastructure lasts, retaining functional and structural capacity even after disastrous events. The goal of this institutional and community transformation project is to revolutionize undergraduate engineering education by integrating sustainability and resiliency (S & R) concepts throughout the Civil Engineering (CE) curriculum at Boise State University. Although the focus is on CE at Boise State, the project has significant potential broader impacts since the work can be a model for other engineering disciplines and other institutions.

Although in recent years, the CE curriculum has evolved to meet standards imposed by industry, government and accreditation organizations, these changes have typically targeted individual courses, leading to important but limited impact on the program. In this project, active learning S&R modules and appropriate design tasks will be developed and embedded in the curriculum to expose students to key S & R concepts. Combined with theory-driven, evidence-based educational research, impact on student learning will be assessed using methods grounded in the KAB framework which recognizes three distinct but interconnected aspects of individuals' responses to educational interventions: knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Twelve CE courses are targeted for S&R infusion including Fluid Mechanics, a junior course that establishes the theoretical foundation for water flow and Civil Engineering Case Studies, a sophomore course that provides an understanding of the breadth of civil engineering design. In the latter course, the strategy to infuse S&R concepts would typically consist of the study of failed infra-structural systems constructed without proper attention to S&R. Through discussion and fact-finding, the students will acquire knowledge on how incorporating S&R considerations in the design process could have resulted in more successful designs.