Development And Outcomes Of A “Design For The Environment” Course

We have developed a Design for the Environment (DfE) course which is a dynamic mix of nontraditional lectures and hands-on DfE laboratory experiments that are infused with real-world interactions. Our engineering teams (E-teams) partner with local green industries and organizations to identify and engineer relevant product and process innovations in the context of sustainability. The DfE course was partially designed using objectives from the Sustainability in Higher Education Assessment Rubric (SHEAR), an ABET-aligned rubric that identifies and describes eight elements essential to courses aiming to teach concepts of sustainability to students. The key feature of this course is a semester product or process development project where the students work closely with green industries with the aim of addressing sustainability challenges. Students learn about product design and innovation in concert with issues of sustainability. During the semester the students interact with the companies and participate in hands on learning labs that develop an understanding of methods to solve problems related to sustainability. We will discuss the concepts of this course as well as discuss course assessments. Introduction The Design for the Environment (DfE) course has been incorporated into the undergraduate and graduate engineering curriculum within the Swanson School of Engineering (SOE). DfE was funded by the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) whose focus is on encouraging the incorporation of sustainability and product innovation into curricula. The learning objective of the DfE course is for students to understand the social, economic, and environmental impacts between product and process design decisions. Since green technology is emerging as the most important industry of the 21st century 1 , it is critical that students are provided the opportunity to understand the linkage between their decisions, engineering designs and sustainability. This course is one of a growing number of sustainability courses offered within Pitt’s SOE. The course is a dynamic mix of authentic learning and hands-on DfE laboratory experiments that are infused with real-world interactions. Our engineering teams (Eteams) partner with local green industries and organizations to identify and engineer relevant product and process innovations and/or improvements. At the close of the semester, E-Teams participate in a design competition; winning E-Teams are awarded a residency at their partner company to implement their design. Most importantly, the aim of the course is for students to gain an understanding of how their actions and designs have a significant impact on global sustainability efforts. Incorporating sustainability into product and process design as a design constraint is clearly a necessity as all designers must understand the limits on natural resources. As environmental concerns such as global warming and energy security continue to weigh on society, the next generation of students will need to be prepared to solve complex sustainability challenges. DfE is one element of moving towards sustainable development, and is a concept that has developed and evolved since the early 1990’s, largely initiated by the electronics industry. In general, DfE is a “specific set of design practices aimed at creating eco-efficient products and processes” 2 . DfE and industrial ecology are centered on the idea that industries can simultaneously achieve P ge 14467.2 2 increased environmental and economic interests. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a DfE program that works in collaboration with many industries to reduce environmental impacts. The program has reached more than 200,000 business facilities and approximately 2 million workers. In 2006 alone, DfE reduced the use of chemicals of concern by 183 million, illustrating the importance of DfE efforts 3 . The proposed course infuses DfE concepts with hands-on lab and industry collaboration, the students are able to understand, engineer, and manage sustainable growth and development. The University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering has made significant commitment to sustainability education. The Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (MCSI) is spearheading sustainability research and education with foci in green building design and construction, infrastructure, and materials. MCSI fosters through the School of Engineering departments both graduate and undergraduate programs in sustainable engineering. In conjunction with MCSI’s mission, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) has committed to sustainability engineering and green design. The faculty authors have recently formed the CEE’s Sustainability and Green Design (SGD) group and have been charged with developing CEE and SOE sustainability curriculum. The PIs have begun to develop and teach a handful of sustainability courses including Life Cycle Assessment, Green Buildings: Design and Construction, Sustainable Engineering and Development, and Product Realization for Global Opportunities. The DfE course expands Pitt engineering students’ experiences and involves them in cross-disciplinary inquiry and problem-solving with students throughout the university. Course Description The students’ experience includes introduction to concepts, labs, tools, and case-studies related to DfE. During the course, students will interact with two different local partners where they learn about the organization and discuss potential DfE challenges with the partner through a field trip to the partners’ facilities and a lab experience developed with the partner. The field trip will be utilized to introduce students to the organization and to brainstorm potential projects with the organization. Multidisciplinary E-Teams will be assembled (approximately 3 to 4 students per team) from the class members; the E-Teams will be challenged to identify a sustainability-related problem with one of the industry/organization partners and to propose a DfE solution that is both practical and sustainable. Throughout the semester, the teams will develop a plan and DfE solution. Funded by the NCIIA curriculum improvement grant, E-Teams have a prototyping budget to enable them to actually build and test their design solutions. E-Teams will present their final product innovations during a design competition at the close of the term. The panel of judges will be made up of the PIs, partner representatives, and at least one guest expert judge. Selected teams will be awarded with residencies where they will have the opportunity to implement their proposed project during the summer. E-Teams will spend a portion of their time at Pitt and their partner site– depending on the needs of the project. The project will culminate in a report for the partner and dissemination of the project. An important element to the course is collaboration with industry since they provide a realistic platform for product development. Within the DfE course, we focused our relationships on P ge 14467.3 3 nonprofit organizations within the Pittsburgh area, which has a strong non-profit and green community. Organizations that have agreed to partner with us include the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh (URA), the Green Building Alliance, Sustainable Pittsburgh, Riverlife Task Force, Phipps Conservatory, GTECH Strategies, and Steel City Biofuels. One or two partners are involved with the class each year. Partners committed to conducting site visits, serving as advisors for E-Teams, and hosting the winning E-Teams for summer project implementation. Course Development This course has been developed in two phases. The first phase included creation of learning outcomes, development of corporate sponsors, and the development of general course outline. The second phase consisted of content development, laboratory planning, and creation of assessments. The instructor team meets weekly to delegate relevant tasks, finalize the details of the course, and discuss content delivery. The focus for the preliminary phase was on identifying overarching principles and learning outcomes while the secondary phase requires attention to details to insure a beneficial experience for the students. Preliminary Course Development Phase. Our main educational outcome is to enable students to design products or processes that have the most beneficial impacts on the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) the society, economy, and environment. In order to successfully achieve this broad goal, we decomposed our main outcome into smaller goals and began to develop the outline of the course. We utilized ABET Criteria 4 , the Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge for the 21 st Century (ASCE BOK) 5 , and the SHEAR 6 to assist in decomposition of our main outcome into goals. These resources also provided the guidance and validation of non-traditional forms of curriculum delivery that provide opportunities for learners with varying learning styles to receive content in their preferred method. It has been shown that learners are more successful when their preferences are met 7 . The DfE course has several learning goals and content delivery methods that provide for an exciting and dynamic educational experience. There are many goals that a successful learner must meet in order to design for optimal impact on the TBL. This course teaches the goals through lecture, discussions, hands-on experiences, and product/process design to solve an overarching corporate guided design problem. Table 1 lists the course goals and the curriculum delivery method. It should be noted that most goals in this course are delivered several times and with different methods to improve learner outcomes. The design problem requires substantial effort on the learners part and is necessary to provide real-world relevance and application to knowledge that has been learning through other portions of the course. AB