Updating the benchmark Sustainable Engineering education report - Trends from 2005 to 2010

In Spring 2010, civil engineering department heads participated in a workshop on incorporating sustainability into the civil engineering curriculum during the National Civil Engineering Department Heads Conference. This paper summarizes findings from the workshop regarding perceptions, barriers and challenges to implementing sustainability into curriculum and research. During the 2010 workshop, a survey was administered, and the results indicated that faculty interest was significant with 12% of faculty identified as researching or teaching in sustainable engineering. The results from the 2010 workshop were compared with a similar benchmark survey conducted by the Center for Sustainable Engineering (CSE). In 2005, the CSE was formed with a mission to enhance and assist in developing sustainable engineering at universities on an international scale. This collaborative research center between University of Texas at Austin, Carnegie Mellon University, and Arizona State University completed a benchmark survey in 2008 that identified and characterized US institutions' current state of sustainability and engineering curricula. The benchmark results showed more than 80% of the respondents reported some level of sustainable engineering in existing courses. The 2010 survey results showed that for civil and environmental engineering departments, 89% of the respondents reported teaching sustainable engineering courses.