Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2021
Journal Title
Sustainability
Volume Number
13
Issue Number
13
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137188
Version
Publisher PDF: the final published version of the article, with professional formatting and typesetting
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a CC BY License.
Disciplines
Engineering
Abstract
Engineers are increasingly called on to develop sustainable solutions to complex problems. Within engineering, however, economic and environmental aspects of sustainability are often priori- tized over social ones. This paper describes how efficiency and sustainability were conceptualized and interrelated by students in a newly developed second-year undergraduate engineering course, An Integrated Approach to Energy. This course took a sociotechnical approach and emphasized modern energy concepts (e.g., renewable energy), current issues (e.g., climate change), and local and personal contexts (e.g., connecting to students’ lived experiences). Analyses of student work and semi-structured interview data were used to explore how students conceptualized sustainability and efficiency. We found that in this cohort (n = 17) students often approached sustainability through a lens of efficiency, believing that if economic and environmental resources were prioritized and optimized, sustainability would be achieved. By exploring sustainability and efficiency together, we examined how dominant discourses that privilege technical over social aspects in engineering can be replicated within an energy context.
Digital USD Citation
Gellees, Laura A.; Mejia, Joel Alejandro; Lord, Susan M.; Hoople, Gordon D.; and Chen, Diana A., "Is It All about Efficiency? Exploring Students’ Conceptualizations of Sustainability in an Introductory Energy Course" (2021). School of Engineering: Faculty Scholarship. 57.
https://digital.sandiego.edu/engineering_facpub/57