Treffer: Interdisciplinary Growth of Sustainability-Minded Engineers through Conservation Technology

To address global challenges such as climate change, we must prepare an engineering workforce of sustainability-minded engineers ready to tackle complex socio-technical problems with multiple stakeholders. Frameworks like the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have begun to drive structural changes in engineering education, including new ABET accreditation focused on sustainability. The emerging field of conservation technology allows engineers to develop sustainability competencies and identities as conservationists and environmentalists while advancing their technical and problem-solving skills. This manuscript describes student identity development in conservation and environmentalism in the Tech4Wildlife (T4W) Vertically Integrated Project (VIP) course at Georgia Tech. The course uses human-centered design principles and the UN Sustainable Development Goals in a project-based learning pedagogy to enable students to solve conservation-oriented, real-world problems and develop a sustainability mindset. A mixed-methods approach incorporated in-person interviews and a post-course survey assessment to assess course impacts and student identity formation. The sample consists of undergraduate students from the College of Engineering and the College of Computing. Based on a sample of 20 of the most recent students, students experienced an identity shift, moving from a mindset of "engineer" and/or "programmer" with no sustainability knowledge to showing significant growth in conservationist and environmentalist mindsets by the end of the course. To educate and develop the next generation of sustainability-minded engineers, interdisciplinary, project-based courses grounded in Sustainable Development Goals may offer a meaningful pedagogical approach for students to develop advanced technical skills and conservationist identities.

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