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An ethical and effective engineering practice is inherently place-responsive and designs for a sustainable future. Engineering students must therefore be educated within a sustainable and sociotechnical paradigm. In the spring of 2022, the integrated engineering department of the University of San Diego offered a new photovoltaic solar energy course for junior and senior students. Informed by place-based pedagogies and culturally sustaining pedagogies, we designed the course to be relevant to the students’ lived experiences by coupling the learning about the technical elements of solar energy with a focus on solar energy projects and sustainability on campus. Prior to running the course, we identified four potential new solar investment/upgrade projects for the university. We divided the class into four teams, with each team assigned to assess the feasibility of a solar project through (1) social, (2) technical, (3) economic, and (4) environmental analyses. Finally, the students integrated their findings and made recommendations to key university stakeholders about how to proceed with solar energy investments on campus. In this paper, we share the course project design, our findings from implementing it, and ideas for adapting it to other place-based sustainability learning experiences.

In the fall of 2022, we offered a pedagogically redesigned sociotechnical environmental engineering elective for junior and senior undergraduates that applied place-based and culturally sustaining pedagogies. The course featured a project designed to facilitate the celebration and leveraging of classroom geographic and cultural diversity to enhance student learning about water sustainability. We analyzed the students’ written project reflections using an inductive thematic analysis to explore whether and how the project and pedagogical model augmented student learning. The primary themes that emerged included: (1) deepened knowledge of home and culture; (2) global conceptualizations; (3) re-evaluation of perceptions and beliefs (in terms of water sustainability and personal relationships with water); and (4) future-facing viewpoints. We consider each of these ‘enhancements’ to the student learning because they extend beyond the course objectives and explore the sociotechnical aspect of engineering. The purpose of this paper is to share the course and project model, our findings from its implementation, and suggestions on how this pedagogical framework could be adapted and scaled to expand the learning of a range of topics at different learner levels.

Contribution: This article focuses on the study of Native Hawaiian student experiences in engineering education. Telling these stories illustrates the importance of legitimizing and appreciating different knowledge types in engineering as we move toward a more inclusive and sustainable field. Background: Native Hawaiian engineering students live oppressive realities due to the history of settler colonialism and occupation that attempted to erase their culture and ways of knowing, including in engineering education. This study shows how students overcome these realities to enact their ways of knowing in a field where it is not always respected. Informing the field of ways to promote and respect the different knowledge types of marginalized groups can help to create a more inclusive and sustainable engineering field. Research Question: In what ways do Native Hawaiian students bring their cultural ways of knowing into engineering education? Methodology: We conducted semi-structured interviews with three undergraduate Native Hawaiian students using Manulani Aluli Meyer's Holographic Epistemology as a theoretical lens to inform the questions and qualitative analysis. The analysis uses a combination of inductive and deductive analyses to create the hologram that Meyer outlines in her work. Findings: The participants found different ways to enact their cultural ways of knowing. We interpret them through the Native Hawaiian values of pono, kuleana, and ho'ihi. This illustrates how engineering educators, researchers, and programs can legitimize the knowledges of the students by promoting authenticity and reciprocity toward marginalized students and their ways of knowing.

As student veterans transition to four-year institutions from the military, they navigate pathways that are often neither linear nor easy. Using Turner’s theory of liminality, we examine student veterans’ perspectives of the transition from military to civilian life. Interviewees include 60 student veterans from all military branches from four universities in the USA. Student veterans describe successes and challenges as they matriculate into engineering education as transfer students. Analyses of qualitative data yield original findings about the importance of mentors and student veteran networks for fostering student veterans’ educational interests and in promoting their persistence. This study uses a framework of liminality to highlight the bridge between prior military position and a forthcoming reentry into society with a new professional identity as an engineer. In describing their studies, student veterans greatly valued military-learned skills, such as patience, discipline, and technical skills, that give them an advantage in their engineering studies. These findings will be relevant to researchers studying transitions in general and researchers investigating veterans or other populations experiencing transitions. University leaders, including student affairs administrators, faculty members, and others who serve the student veteran community will also benefit from the results.

The global pandemic of COVID-19 brought about the transition to Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) at higher education institutions across the United States, prompting both students and the faculty to rapidly adjust to a different modality of teaching and learning. Other crises have induced disruptions to academic continuity (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes), but not to the same extent as COVID-19, which has affected universities on a global scale. In this paper, we describe a qualitative case study where we interviewed 11 second-year Integrated Engineering students during the Spring 2020 semester to explore how they adapted to the transition to remote learning. Our results revealed several student challenges, how they used self-discipline strategies to overcome them, and how the faculty supported students in the classroom through a compassionate and flexible pedagogy. Faculty members showed compassion and flexibility by adjusting the curriculum and assessment and effectively communicating with students. This was especially important for the women participants in this study, who more frequently expressed utilizing pass/fail grading and the personal and gendered challenges they faced due to the pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis, we found that a key element for supporting students’ well-being and success is the faculty members communicating care and incorporating flexibility into their courses.

Introduction. Lifelong learning (LLL) is an intentional learning that people engage in throughout their lives for personal and professional fulfillment and to improve the quality of their lives. Develop the capability for lifelong learning in Higher Education is important to facilitate the incorporation of new graduates to work. To this end, we have designed a program on "Lifelong learning competencies for Higher Education students', which we have applied to students at University of San Diego, California, USA and to the University of Distance Education, Spain. Methodology. We have presented the program by means a workshop where the debate and the reflection played one important strategy. To check the program’s achievements we used mixed methodologies, according to the evaluative research. We applied one questionnaire, and together to a practice and the students' personal portfolio, they enabled us to assess the program effectiveness, satisfaction and impact. Results. The comparison of the answers in the questionnaire, before and after of the workshops sing that students improved in their knowledge and awareness about the importance of LLL and key competencies for their profession development plan. Discussion. The program contributes to improve key competencies and commitment to learning throughout the people’s lives.