Developing a sustainability mindset in future engineers and in engineering practice

Sustainability is key in all engineering practice and should be integrated into all engineering curricula. To answer the call for United Nations sustainable development goals, future graduates must develop a sustainability mindset. The objective for this research is to assess the sustainability mindset of students. This ongoing research takes a mixed-methods approach to analyze and evaluate initial survey data from first year students in the BSc. in Sustainable Design Engineering program. These students were asked to define "sustainability" and "engineering" at various points throughout the introductory engineering course "Sustainability in Engineering Design". The results were analyzed with MATLAB to code for word occurrence and correlating with criteria, such as the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board's Graduate Attributes, learning outcomes from the course instructor, National Guidelines for Sustainability, and other Engineers Canada sustainability competencies. The criteria were developed into seven categories: environmental consideration, future planning, empathy, collaboration, systemic & critical thinking, healthy & safety, and self-motivation. Using the developed categories and methodology, each student's "sustainability mindset" can be evaluated. Results will be presented in the context of whether a student possesses defined features of a "sustainability mindset". This research will yield results to inform future "sustainability mindset" research.