Capacity building for sustainable engineering practice: A civil engineering education perspective

Abstract

Civil engineers play a critical role in the planning and design of the built environment around. As a result, they wield enormous influence over the use of earth’s natural resources. At this pivotal juncture of increased globalization and accelerated, widespread economic development, demand for earth’s natural resources and the impact of development on our ecosystem are increasing rapidly. This is creating an unsustainable scenario, and therefore, it is imperative for educators to prepare the future engineering workforce to become stewards of a sustainable global society. This paper presents some reflections of the author based on experience from developing and teaching a course titled “Material Systems for Sustainable Design” as part of a civil engineering curriculum. The overarching course objective is to provide students with the knowledge on sustainability and create an awareness of the tools that are both available and needed to apply sustainable material selection practices in their future design work.