Ever deeper and wider: incorporating sustainability into a practitioner oriented engineering curriculum

Whilst valuable debates about how best to plan, promote, and evaluate sustainable futures for our communities are conducted by governments and NGOs at global gatherings, there is an equal, and possibly more pressing, need to inspire and equip engineering graduates with the means to design and implement the required solutions. However, incorporation of sustainability as a subject into existing syllabi is problematic, primarily because of the need for students to acquire both holistic and context specific skills. This contribution first considers the reasons why we should be concerned with the integration of sustainability concepts into graduate and post-graduate curricula. We then go on to discuss the significance of cross-disciplinary thinking and skills as a key element of sustainability relevant knowledge. Finally, we report the design and deployment, within a water engineering degree course, of a post-graduate module in “Process design for sustainability”. The implications of our experiences for the theory and practice of engineering education are examined and suggestions made concerning best practice.