NLI: Research: Influence of Sustainability-Focused Course Interventions on Students' Engineering Identity Development

Sustainability is an urgent and critical need that modern engineering must address. To this end, engineering students should develop a sustainability-focused outlook. This project will contribute to the goals of the NSF Research in the Formation of Engineers Program by integrating sustainability principles into engineering courses to cultivate a generation of engineers who are mindful of their roles and equipped to fulfill their responsibilities in fostering a sustainable future.

Through the development of innovative course interventions guided by the Engineering for One Planet (EOP) Framework, this project will enhance students' understanding of sustainability across social, environmental, and economic dimensions, leading to the development of a sustainability-conscious engineering identity. By focusing on sustainability-conscious engineering identities, the project will not only prepare students to incorporate sustainability practices into professional engineering work but also promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) within the engineering industry.

The significance of this project lies in its potential to transform engineering curricula and pedagogy, and prepare graduates who are ready to contribute to a sustainable and equitable society.

This project will investigate how sustainability-focused course interventions help students develop a sustainability-conscious engineering identity. This will be explored in terms of students’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors across the social, environmental, and economic dimensions of sustainability. To achieve this goal, the project will be conducted in two phases.

In the first phase, the research team will collaborate with faculty, departments, and other stakeholders to design and implement course interventions using the EOP framework. Approximately ten courses from the Rochester Institute of Technology’s (RIT) College of Engineering Technology and College of Engineering will be included in the study. The research will employ a multiple-case study design with each course serving as a case.

The nature of the intervention in each course, ranging from single modules to full-term projects, will vary according to the course level, student’s background knowledge, and recommendations from the department and college curriculum committees. The second phase will involve collecting and analyzing data to explore the influence of these course interventions on students' engineering identity development using the analytical framework of Sustainability Consciousness.

The research will utilize written reflections and in-person semi-structured interviews to gather qualitative data. Participants will include students enrolled in the courses in which interventions are implemented. Data will be collected from each course over a period of three years.

Incremental changes will be made to the interventions based on student reflections and interviews, and course assessment data. Student reflections and interviews will be analyzed using thematic and process coding to identify shifts in students' knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors in the social, environmental, and economic dimensions of sustainability.

This project will be guided by an advisory board comprising experts in STEM education, curriculum design, community engagement, EOP implementation, and DEIJ, to ensure its rigor and relevance. Expected outcomes include insights into the mechanisms underlying students’ identity development in terms of the role of engineers in sustainable development (knowledge), viewpoints toward addressing sustainability issues (attitude), and engagement in actions to actualize sustainability-related changes (behavior).

These insights will inform the design of future curricular interventions within the cases under study and beyond. In addition, effective pedagogical strategies for integrating sustainability into engineering education and the development of transferable course materials will benefit the engineering education community and subsequently contribute to developing an engineering workforce aware of and equipped to address the sustainability needs of the modern world.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.