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As the field of civil engineering evolves to address twenty-first century challenges, the demand for creative and innovative thinking rises. Engineering institutions around the nation have begun to integrate sustainability into the curriculum. Topics such as innovation and entrepreneurship are highly correlated with sustainability goals; however, many times they are viewed as market or management-driven principles. The Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network (KEEN) Program was established to transform the U.S. workforce through equipping graduate engineers with an entrepreneurial mindset. This program is based on KEEN student outcomes (KSOs), which can be incorporated into department level, as well as course level, curricula. This paper focuses on the integration of KSOs into a senior civil engineering capstone course through two course activities over two years. KEEN rubrics are used to assess student achievement of the KSOs focused on innovative thinking and productive collaboration. The assessment results indicate that there are existing strengths as well as future opportunities to enhance student performance of innovative thinking and open-ended problem solving--skills that are essential to promoting sustainable design and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades, there has been growing emphasis on sustainable development and a growing need to train students to think sustainably in preparation for their careers as practicing engineers. Thinking sustainably requires the consideration of not only environmental impacts but also societal and economic impacts. Thus, teaching future engineers to think sustainably requires a multifaceted, multipronged approach. To that end, a team of faculty from the Departments of Civil, Industrial, and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington acquired funding from the National Science Foundation to implement a project entitled 'Engineering Sustainable Engineers.' The project was designed to infuse undergraduate curricula in the three departments with sustainability, which was augmented by incorporating sustainability emphasis into other aspects of the undergraduate experience. Key program elements were (1) learning modules developed for courses across all levels of matriculation within the three curricula, (2) quality sustainable internships, and (3) a multidisciplinary senior design project with a sustainability focus. This paper summarizes the rationale, approaches, and results for integrating sustainability into the civil engineering undergraduate learning experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes the state of knowledge in relation to advances in education for sustainable development focused on higher education and in generic competencies, reviewing some of the existing proposals in the literature and analyzing other university approaches. It has focused on the curricula, applying a participatory methodology based on surveys and expert consultation for the identification and selection of generic competencies related to sustainability in a civil engineering degree at Universidad Europea (Spain). From the literature review, 17 generic competencies were preselected. A set of five weighted transversal competencies and their acquisition level have been obtained through surveys to stakeholders and interviews with experts. Critical thinking, adaptation to change, decision making, problem solving, and multidisciplinary team-working were chosen in order of importance. Competence acquisition level was addressed as not easy to rate or it seems to be exigent for graduate students. Problem-based learning is also selected as the best choice for the development of these sustainability generic skills in the entire civil engineering degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]