Educating for sustainability: opportunities in undergraduate engineering

Awareness of the complex and interrelated environmental, economic and social problems in our world is increasing; the sustainability debate no longer focuses on whether changes are necessary but on what kind of changes are needed and how they can be carried out. Engineers are increasingly looked to for sustainable solutions yet find themselves less than adequately prepared to provide answers. Education is consistently identified as one of the key strategies for facilitating sustainable development; the required shift in the thinking, values and actions of individuals and institutions calls for efforts to make sustainability concerns a central theme of all education. This paper examines ways to better prepare engineers for the challenges of sustainable development and to increase the effectiveness of their solutions.