Assessment of a sustainability program in graduate Civil and Environmental Engineering Education

The engineering professions are becoming increasingly international and oriented towards a sustainability mindset. To enable graduate students in the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department at Michigan Technological University to prepare to meet these demands, the National Science Foundation awarded the University a “Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM)” grant that enabled 45 students in six CEE degree programs to receive $5,000-$10,000 scholarships in 2008-12. The Michigan Tech S-STEM Program was designed to advance a global outlook of economic and social prosperity that protects the environment through various means. A complementary goal was to advance intercultural competency. The S-STEM scholars´ knowledge of and attitudes toward sustainability and intercultural competency was assessed during the grant period. Pre-/post-intercultural competence assessment results were similar, however, through coursework, one sub-group of scholars displayed increased intercultural competence in pre/post assessment. Emergent content analysis of scholar written materials suggests that maturation in scholar perspectives, balancing engineering with community, economic, and environmental realities, occurred during the scholarship periods.