Karen

Thank you for your input. Presently we have a UPRM Sustainability Community of Practice that includes professors from Arts & Sciences, Engineering, Agriculture and Business. We are working with developing new courses for the program in collaboration with professors from economics and social sciences. We have Dr Rafael Boglio from Social Sciences/Anthropology creating the Design Anthropology for Sustainable Design and we have Dr Ivonne Diaz from Economics creating the Sustainable Economic Analysis course (both courses will be part of the Sustainability Engineering Core)...We believe that a Sustainability Engineer should integrate the technical, ecological, social and economic aspects in the pursuit of problem solving and solution developmen

Dear Karen, thanks so much for your supportive comments and inquiry.  As we are at the doorstep of our project, a number of things are still in development, but here is what I can say at this point regarding your questions - in fact, answering these is formatively valuable:

Regarding the collaboration between STEM and A&H: we are initiating several campus-wide conversations to solicit interest and collaboration from faculty and students across the disciplines.  This is already bearing fruit, but many more proposals will emerge in the future.  Ultimately, we intend to create communities of practice that will foster the transdisciplinary dialogue and mutual understanding that is essential for making real progress.  A challenge will be how to blend everything coherently, rather than simply enumerating different aspects discretely, but ultimately, we believe that using "people, planet, and prosperity" as a unifying theme will lead to a co-creation of the courses, spaces and opportunities that will work.  In particular, since you noted “prosperity”, we will cultivate a philosophy to question “profit” and focus more fundamentally on human prosperity and flourishing.

We already have a good idea of the general approach.  We plan an inquiry-based and project-based pedagogy in which the various facets of emerging challenges will arise in a holistic way, provoking transdisciplinary thinking and approaches.  Inquiry, discovery, and experimentation will be grade weighted to counterbalance the narrow “get the right answer” mentality.  To achieve this, several courses will be team-taught by faculty from different disciplines.

Our best concrete example at this point is a planned freshman/first semester course called “Creating a Sustainable World”, which would have no pre-requisites, so as to attract students of all disciplines, leading to a vibrant classroom dynamic with students and faculty from different fields.  For sure, there will be “engineering” elements, such as basics of life cycle analysis, accounting for energy and material usage, data collection, building models, and “making things work”.  But these activities will be contextualized within a broad social-technical framework that will bring to light issues such as unjust distribution of resources, policy considerations, attitudes propagated in the media, and many others.

We also imagine diverse modalities of instruction and activities.  How will activities such as listening narratives from neighbors of local communities, walking through forests, reading or creating poetry, and understanding the history of how we got here, all conspire to inform and inspire our students?

As a final note on this, we plan that our students will take several courses in the social and political sciences, and we are planning new courses such as "Ecological Economics", “Natural Capitalism”, “Smart Cities”, “Life Cycle Analysis”, and "Design Anthropology for Sustainability".  Other courses will include practical training or research with organizations and enterprises that work for holistic, sustainable solutions, which value prosperity.

Regarding your question about evaluation, with specific regard to the current NSF project, which is to develop a minor program as a precursor to the major program, we have a well developed evaluation and educational research plan.  Some of this revolves around quantitative evaluation metrics such as numbers of applicants, retention, and gender parity (we expect that the program will attract women).  Complementing this, we will perform qualitative evaluation, in which we will examine student "mindsets" in four domains: self-efficacy, engineering and technology, conception of sustainability, and diversity, equity and inclusion.  We plan to track evolution of student thinking as they progress, using approaches ranging from direct interviews to evaluation of their perspectives in assignments and other fora.  To go back to your original question about circular design, that would be considered as within the "conception of sustainability" domain.

I hope this responds to your inquiry, and please feel free to circle back for a follow up.  You can also consult our NSF abstract here.

Thank you, Ivan and Christopher, for providing more details and explanation related to your project work.  

I appreciate learning more about the role/work of a sustainability engineer and the courses and experiences that support studies in this area.  Also, you have pointed to the importance of having a unifying theme that all constituents know.  What I now appreciate, based on your responses, is that "people, planet, and prosperity" is more than a goal or idea--it is as framework (and maybe even a rubric?) that allows the team and partners to consider and, possibly assess, how well decisions and activities align with your intentions.  It might be one way to evaluate how and how well the program is working in relation to your goals.  Also, thank you for clarifying what “prosperity” means within your project. I am inspired to more fully consider human prosperity in the context of my projects too!  Your qualitative study will add an essential dimension to your work, and help us understand what contributes to longitudinal growth of students.  Important work on many levels--best wishes!  

Erica

Thank you for your comments and after seeing your video we would like to talk more about collaborations with UPR Mayaguez. You can contact me at ivan.baiges@upr.edu

Hi Erica, thanks for posting, and also for sharing your video, which I watched with interest (I'll post there later).  I think we're on the same wavelength about "social-technical' systems.  Let's follow up!

Hi Catherine, thanks for watching our video and for your kind words and questions, and I particularly appreciate your question about which transdisciplinary experiences have the greatest impact.  To be honest, and again keeping in mind that we are at the developmental stage of the project, I think our answer to that is “still in progress”, but please consider the following:

First, in my response to Karen Mutch-Jones, above, I indicated our current vision on how to build a transdisciplinary framework in our program.  The need for transdisciplinarity is clear, as questions and approaches to sustainability are necessarily and inherently transdisciplinary.  All disciplines, ranging from engineering to literature, have responded and have more to say about this.  Also, the literature and trends in Engineering Education, such as the Engineer of 2020, the Carnegie Foundation report on Educating Engineers, and the movement for “engineering in context, all recommend interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary educational approaches.  Our team also participated in the Olin College Summer Institute last summer, where we learned more about how to cross disciplinary boundaries and student-faculty boundaries in developing courses and curricula.  The ideas that I mentioned in my response to Karen are based on our team’s conversations with students and faculty, which indicate where there is already a ‘coalition of the willing’ to develop the program, and which reflect approaches from some prior transdisciplinary collaborations at our campus.  

Having said that, you are provoking me to put on our agenda for this summer to do a more systematic inquiry of transdisciplinary experiences and their impacts, to further inform what we are doing.  And looking forward, our own built-in research and evaluation plan will give us some data from our cohorts about what works, which we will be able to report in 2-3 years.  Please offer any of your suggestions that you think we should consider implementing.

Regarding your questions about community partners, these are truly essential to our mission to educate students in a manner that directly involves them to work with (we want to change the narrative away from ‘for’) vulnerable populations, particularly in the Puerto Rican context.  In the NSF project, we have arranged to work with three partners who all represent organizations that are focused on sustainability and have a strong presence and social mission in Puerto Rico: 

Plenitud Iniciativas Eco-educativas, “a non-profit educational farm and community dedicated to service and sustainability” which provides services and education for bioconstruction, organic agriculture, rainwater harvesting in local communities;

Resilient Power Puerto Rico “promotes local access to the knowledge, tools, and resources that are necessary to create sustainable and equitable community development”; 

And re:3d, Inc., “spun out of Engineers Without Borders – NASA Johnson Space Center in 2013,  re:3D® Inc. is a social enterprise pioneering new innovations to decimate the cost & scale barriers to 3D printing in order to create jobs & enable problem-solvers worldwide to independently address local needs.”

These partners will provide mentored research or practical training experiences to students in the project.  This is designed to give students direct “on the ground” experience with issues that relate to sustainability engineering, and to provide them with access to a network of future employers with similar objectives.  We are excited that this will be a symbiotic relationship that will benefit all parties, ultimately producing a cadre of well trained professionals and citizens.

There are several other stakeholders of the broader initiative who are acknowledged at the end of the video.

Thanks again for your inquiry, and I look forward to following up.

Chris

Thank you for the feedback. An important aspect of the Sustainability Engineering Program is outreach. We have to impact engineers that are already working on the transition towards sustainability, we have to work with our current students (this is the objective of the minor) and we have to be ready to prepare the new generation of students. For this new generation we are working on some teaching materials (including online sessions for teachers and students) to present the sustainability mindset. We believe that sustainability should be taught in middle and high school as any other subject.

Hi Chris, thanks for your interest.

First, to add to what Iván said about engaging younger students, we will have an active recruitment plan in which we will engage students at the high school level, and hopefully spark their interest even a couple of years before they are ready for college.  To reach even more deeply into the elementary and middle schools, we plan to create assignments and activities through which students in the program will go back to their communities and do some teaching and mentoring around sustainability.

RE community engagement and intersectionality: The first step is to help students understand what intersectionality means, to grapple with the ideas that the same conditions do not affect everyone equally, and that many of the factors that disadvantage people compound one another.  A simple example in our context might be to ask, within the idea that rooftop solar could cover residential electricity demand across the island, how should this be prioritized in consideration of the vulnerabilities related to geographic, economic, and other factors?  Our partner Resilient Power Puerto Rico has developed a vulnerability index and uses them in decision making.  We think that they will be very instrumental to helping students not only understand the issue intellectually, but also to see how to put it into practice.  In general, community engagement will occur through the planned research or practical experience with our partners.

As the project has not yet officially started, we do not yet have any outcomes to report.  However, we expect to build off of the following prior experience: Two years ago, in conjunction with a different NSF project and our University Institute for Community Development (Instituto para el Desarrollo de las Comunidades), we sponsored a summer symposium based on Design Thinking and co-design that brought together about 60 people from a dozen communities (virtually).  We saw some excellent outcomes, ranging from age and gender diversity, to ‘boots on the ground’ implementation of projects important to their communities.  We will consider how this type of activity could also be built into our program.

Regarding mentoring, We will develop a community of practice for our students and through that we will provide close mentoring with the faculty involved in the project.  As the program intends to integrate many perspectives, the mentoring is not limited to social aspects, but certainly several mentors will represent those areas.  Perhaps behind your question is the premise that traditionally, social aspects have not been adequately addressed in engineering education, and so in that sense, our program will ensure that this is properly included.

Ivan and Christopher, Thank you so much for your detailed responses. I know reaching into earlier grades is a big ask and likely not something your targeting as you get this specific project off and running. Let's keep that in mind for future iterations. I agree, Ivan, sustainability should be taught early and often.  Christopher, I love the idea of integrating vulnerability measures into engineering design and sustainability.  Don't forget that as new ideas arise, you have the option of applying for supplemental funding off of your original NSF award to support even more activities. Think of ways you can make an even broader impact with some of these expanded student populations, and mentoring ideas. 

This is such great work. I really look forward to keeping an eye on how you're all doing.  Congratulations and keep it up. You're making real impacts here.  

Muchas gracias por abundar en la diferencia entre ambos enfoques. Ciertamente Puerto Rico debe moverse a un enfoque más dirigido a la prosperidad para buscar el bienestar humano, el cual a su vez va a impactar de alguna manera el crecimiento del país. Si las personas reciben los servicios esenciales y de calidad estarán en mejor posición de contribuir al bienestar personal y colectivo. Excelente trabajo!

De hecho, nosotros tratamos de separar el concepto de desarrollo económico de crecimiento económico ya que en el modelo convencional (economía lineal no sostenible) el crecimiento implica el seguir usando mas y mas recursos del planeta. La sostenibilidad mira implantar un modelo de economía circular que use los recursos de manera mas sabia a la misma vez que mejora el bienestar humano lo cual es el verdadero desarrollo.

Hi Mark!  Thanks so much for your insightful comment, I agree!  So, admittedly, we are so far 'working backwards' from thinking about how to first build a program by recruiting students in high schools, but we do plan to work further back through recruitment and outreach to younger students.  One way to do this is to have current students in the program go back to their schools and communities and teach, demonstrate, or co-create a project.  Lot's more to think about here.  Cheers! 

Muchas gracias por su respuesta. Concuerdo con usted que las posibilidades que ofrecen las artes en conjunto con STEM son muy variadas, imagino que esto hace que el análisis en este tipo de proyectos sea más complejo.

Gracias por ver nuestro vídeo! creo que nuestros proyectos tienen muchas cosas en común. Yo aún soy novata en este tipo de investigaciones pero un aspecto muy importante que he podido observar es que el involucramiento de la comunidad es clave. Creo que su proyecto tiene un gran potencial y es único en su tipo, muchos éxitos en su desarrollo y gracias por compartir su experiencia!

Gracias, Martha.  ¡Podemos continuar la conversación!

Gracias Marilu y de nuevo, quiero interactuar con ustedes, tienen excelentes recursos.