Adventurous Aardvarks

Ryan Anderson

Hamideh Hosseiniirani

Darshan Karwat

Julianne Rolf

David Soukup

Document Purpose

The EOP initiative seeks to transform the national engineering curriculum to include sustainability as a core value in the profession.

During this workshop, you and a diverse group of educators, engineers, and other stakeholders will explore, identify and help prioritize approaches for scaling the EOP initiative. The ideas you generate and the approaches you prioritize will guide the creation of a 5-year road map for scaling EOP.

You and your team will use this document to capture your recommendations for the 5-year road map. Your first task will be to create a personal introduction (see the prework page for more details). You can then expect to be prompted, throughout the convening, to complete the different slides in this document. The end result with be the recommendations that you pitch to all of the other workshop participants.

Table of Contents

1. Team Introductions
2. Rules of Engagement
3. Scratch Paper
4. Alpha Plan
5. Plan Revisions
6. Speed Dating
7. Final Plan and Pitch

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Team Personal Introductions

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Activity introduction

The EOP initiative seeks to transform the national engineering curriculum to include sustainability as a core value in the profession. As an EOP Scaling for Impact workshop participant we would like you to build on the professional bio you provided during registration, by sharing what connects you to this work, personally.

To that end, please create a 1 slide presentation (with images, not words), using the slide with your name on it. You will present this slide during Day 1 of the workshop (please plan for a 2 minute presentation):

The next slide is an example of a personal introduction, which includes:

1. My Home: What is the place (or places) and who are the people that you call home?
2. My inspiration: Who got you interested in and engaged with sustainability? Who are the people you are doing this work for?

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My Home

My Inspiration

Victoria Matthew

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My Home

My Inspiration

Ryan Anderson

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My Home

My Inspiration

Hamideh Hosseiniirani

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My Inspiration

Darshan Karwat

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My Home

My Inspiration

Julianne Rolf

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My Home

My Inspiration

David Soukup

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Rules of Engagement

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Your goal and area of focus

Goal: The EOP initiative seeks to transform the national engineering curriculum to include environmental sustainability as a core value in the profession. During this workshop, every team will develop and share their recommended approaches for the creation of a 5-year road map for scaling EOP.

Process: To achieve this goal we have prepared a workshop that will engage you in:

• Whole group presentations and discussions designed to inform your plans
• Cohort-based team activities: Each team is assigned one of two areas of focus: institutionalization or propagation.

Area of Focus: Your team’s area of focus is institutionalization. For the purposes of the workshop, we define institutionalization of EOP as the action of establishing ideas or tools across and within an organization or institution.

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Your team process

Your team will be self-led (i.e. there will be no facilitator). To ensure you produce and capture the most robust recommendations, you will each be assigned roles for different parts of the process:

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• Timekeeper: Ensure that your team completes the assigned tasks on time.
• Monitor: Ensure all voices are heard, paying particular attention to the scribe who will be hard at work capturing notes.
• Scribe: Capture the ideas and decisions of the group in this document.
• Participant: Everyone is a participant, even if they are assigned one of the above roles. As a participant you commit to:
• Show up, be present and engaged
• Share the airtime (step up or step back)
• Speak human to human
• Respect each others’ thinking and value all contributions

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Scratch Paper

Use the scratch paper page with your name on it to capture any new thinking about your recommendations/plan. This may be inspired by workshop presentations and discussions, or your own personal reflections.

Ryan Anderson

How is risk assessed in each field? Social justice HAZOP i.e. model sustainability and other risk using the same technical framework we already teach toward risk and safety?

I don’t see a clear path to freeing up faculty time. What fraction of faculty need a level of involvement? How are we competing with others vying for faculty time: KEEN, writing in the curriculum, mindfulness workshops, student mental health training etc.

We say “A collaborative program in which a set of employers collaborate with a college to change both of their cultures/environments, and only students who took certain courses are able to have internships at the selected employers”. I’m curious on the “certain courses” aspect. Often in engineering the first two years are math, science, and some collection of humanities courses. There isn’t much space to add a new course. Would this vision be they are taking a humanities course focused on sustainability? Or was the vision to be involved in an engineering sustainability course(s)? We don’t really have any elective engineering sustainability courses at earlier levels, which could cause friction with the internship timeline. And if we brought the content into typical lower level engineering classes, which I hope we would do, then all students would have the same training. Maybe instead of these courses being a gate, could it encourage industry ask students about their knowledge of sustainability, giving incentives to students to learn it and faculty to teach it? Another issue is access; some students will join with preconceived notes and avoid sustainability courses. They may have a chance of perspective as they move through the curriculum, and then be on the outside looking in.

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Hamideh Hosseiniirani

• Is being an entrepreneur easier to continue working in the sustainability realm?
• ​

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Darshan Karwat

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Julianne Rolf

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David Soukup

More engineering colleges are using the F.E. exam as an assessment tool. Just like there are questions on the exam on engineering ethics, questions could be formulated on sustainability. I understand “Teaching to the test” is a problem, however, when things are measured, they tend to get done.

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Your Alpha Plan

Team Roles:

Timekeeper: Ryan Anderson

Monitor: Hamideh Hosseiniirani

Scribe: Darshan Karwat

Part 1:List 20 different approaches or tools that might help institutionalize EOP (10 mins)

1. Ryan: Advising for dual majors in programs that exist
2. Ryan: ABET+ review to coincide with normal cycle review?
3. Ryan: NTT hires/part of FTE
4. Ryan: Endowed position at dept level
5. Julianne: Hire faculty dedicated to sustainability
6. Julianne: Provide workshops on how to incorporate sustainability into engineering education
7. Julianne: Add sustainability to required ethics trainings
8. Julianne: Create sustainability awards/competitions for senior design projects
9. Hamideh: more interdisciplinary courses for engineers in diff backgrounds
10. Hamideh: More opportunities (courses, seminars, talks) to meet and learn from people who developed an interdisciplinary project(s).

11. Hamideh: Add sustainability curriculum to all of the engineering majors > awareness

12. Hamideh:

13. David: Add sustainability to the P.E. licensing exams, much like ethics is required

14. David: Require continuing education credits for maintain licensure in sustainability

15. David: Require all faculty to have training in unconscious bias

16. David: complete modules including exam questions and solutions on sustainability,in addition to basic content

17. Darshan: Create a collaborative program in which a set of employers collaborate with a college to change BOTH of their cultures/environments, and only students who took certain courses are able to have internships at the selected employers

18. Darshan: Create courses/programs in sustainability for practicing engineers at their alma maters. This can help build alumni relationships and have engineering departments have a larger impact beyond students, brings new employers into the fold, and the state of the working world into the university

19. Darshan:

20. Darshan:

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Part 2: Describe 3 different ways to combine your ideas on the previous slide to institutionalize EOP (10 mins)

Approach 1: Not letting this die: the sustainability of sustainability: an integrated approach to university education, licensure, lifelong learning, and incentive.

Approach 2: Development of a multi-level assessment framework and accountability mechanism

Approach 3: Creating a buy-in ecosystem: it includes training faculty

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Part 3: Select preferred approach from the 3 on the previous slide; revise and refine as needed (10 mins)

Not letting this die: the sustainability of sustainability: An integrated approach to university education, licensure, lifelong learning, and incentive.

Goal: Simultaneously change the university and employment environments using a mix of incentives and requirements

• Creation of networked pipeline: A collaborative program in which a set of employers collaborate with a college to change both of their cultures/environments, and only students who took certain courses are able to have internships at the selected employers
• The set of courses that counts would require a training of professors
• The employers who could participate would require a training of HR and employer leadership
• Build a new set of “students” and alumni: Create programs to teach sustainability to practicing engineers at their alma maters. Make it cheaper for alumni, and incentivize those who are not alumni to make them so
• Creation of a licensing exam questions and create credibility for sustainability for practicing engineers
• Build a multi-level and multi-stakeholder assessment

What this builds:

• Changed environments inside and outside the university
• Changed incentive structures
• Credibility for sustainability knowledge
• Economic and financial valuation of sustainability in employer business models
• Alumni relations

Gaps/considerations you need to consider as you revise your approach going forward

Centralized assessment? Dept/college/ABET

Framework is already unwieldy - does not make it easy to work with several stakeholders if is too hard. Does this imply we need to focus on the core objectives too?

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Plan Revisions

Team Roles:

Timekeeper: David Soukup

Monitor: Ryan Anderson

Scribe: Hamideh Hosseiniirani

Revisions Part 1: What new ideas, approaches or thinking do you propose integrating into your plan? (10 mins)

Proposed Revisions (be sure to draw upon Food for Thought Speakers, Learnings from EOP Pilot Grantees and the Literature Review):

• Students are learning, but the working environment isn’t open to new/sustainability related ideas
• Derisking this is important…focus on early adopters
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Revisions Part 2: Rewrite your plan to integrate your new thinking (15 mins)

Not letting this die: the sustainability of sustainability: An integrated approach to university education, licensure, lifelong learning, and incentive.

Goal: Simultaneously change the university and employment environments using a mix of incentives and requirements

• Creation of networked pipeline: A collaborative program in which a set of employers collaborate with a college to change both of their cultures/environments, and only students who took certain courses are able to have internships at the selected employers
• The set of courses that counts would require a training of professors
• The employers who could participate would require a training of HR and employer leadership
• Build a new set of “students” and alumni: Create programs to teach sustainability to practicing engineers at their alma maters. Make it cheaper for alumni, and incentivize those who are not alumni to make them so
• Creation of a licensing exam questions on sustainability and require continuing education credits for maintaining one’s license on sustainability, much like there are questions and professional development on ethics in the licensing. Create credibility for sustainability for practicing engineers
• Build a multi-level and multi-stakeholder assessment

What this builds:

• Changed environments inside and outside the university
• Changed incentive structures
• Credibility for sustainability knowledge
• Economic and financial valuation of sustainability in employer business models
• Alumni relations

Gaps/considerations you need to consider as you revise your approach going forward

Centralized assessment? Dept/college/ABET

Framework is already unwieldy - does not make it easy to work with several stakeholders if is too hard. Does this imply we need to focus on the core objectives too?

De-risking using early adopters

*If courses are required, most engineers aren't “in” the major exactly until 3rd year (math and science years 1 and 2). Are we too late? They want internships earlier…what are the certain courses; not much money for new classes

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Speed Dating

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Speed Dating Round 1: Adventurous Aardvarks and Curious Canaries�2 mins pitch, 7 mins of feedback plus 1 mins buffer per team (20 mins)

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Adventurous Aardvarks

Roles:

Presenter: Julianne Rolf

Timekeeper: David Soukup

Scribe: Ryan Anderson

Curious Canaries

Roles:

Presenter: Eli Patten

Timekeeper: Nathalie Lavoine

Scribe: John Atkinson

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Notes: Ryan A thoughts - Well done everyone!!! [Leaves out grad school?] [Career fair?];

• Long term - will the students change the employment by going into the jobs or is it employment culture?
• Likes - bringing back engineers for courses on site (prof master for people in industry with evening courses) & the credibility for sustainability knowledge (when rubber hits the road how do you focus on those aspects);
• Thinks it is a creative approach/reframed the idea of night classes (vs. just money making it is an opportunity for a cultural shift)
• licensure is incredibly bureaucratic (David re: turn it into the questions like ethics, we can move the dial here);
• WHO is doing this and where is it coming from…what is step 1 and what if step 1 fails (University either large dept or school of engineering);
• need to get buy-in from someone with say in the reward structure;
• if starts with one dept do you lose the interdisciplinary part;
• needs to be some governance at the top (e.g. advisory body or other school governance with decision making authority.

Speed Dating Round 2: Adventurous Aardvarks and Kooky Kangaroos

2 mins pitch, 7 mins of feedback plus 1 mins buffer per team (20 mins)

Adventurous Aardvarks

Roles:

Presenter: Darshan Karwat

Timekeeper: Julianne Rolf

Scribe: David Soukup

Kooky Kangaroos

Roles:

Presenter: James McGuffin-Cawley

Timekeeper: Richard Niesenbaum

Scribe: Marissa Brock

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Notes: Require or optional internship, start with smaller group as a pilot. Make it competitive to make it attractive, people will want to apply. Work with exam board to incorporate sustainability. Implement certificate programs, as well. Certificate programs just have credibility and acceptance, like six sigma or LEED is accepted by industry.

How much the degree/certificate will increase the success rate for students in their future carrier?

Final Plan and Pitch

Team Roles:

Timekeeper: Hamideh Hosseiniirani

Monitor: Darshan Karwat

Scribe: Julianne Rolf

Revise your plan and prepare your 2 mins pitch (20 mins)

• Creation of networked pipeline: A collaborative program in which a set of employers collaborate with a college to change both of their cultures/environments, such as via course selection, networking/mentoring, professional development, focused internship opportunities, and HR.
• Build a new set of “students” and alumni: Create programs to teach sustainability to both undergraduate students and practicing engineers at their alma maters. Courses would include:
• Basics to advance training in sustainability topics
• Preparing practicing engineers for future sustainability-related questions on licensing exams (like for ethics Lobbying National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying to include questions on sustainability on licensing exams and include sustainability in continuing education requirements to maintain license.
• Blended practicing engineer-student courses
• Outcomes
• New kinds of credibility for sustainability learning and practice
• Innovation in how to engage engineers on sustainability across generations

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Turning two knobs at once: A collaborative effort to simultaneously change the university and employment environments using a mix of courses, incentives, and requirements (networking, lifelong learning, certifications, licensing…)

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