"Life cycle sustainability economics" module

Abstract

For engineering products and designs to be sustainable, it is critically important to educate all engineers, regardless of specialty, about conducting economic analyses that consider environmental impacts. If engineers do not include environmental impacts in their economic analyses, they are more likely to choose alternatives that are cheaper up front but have adverse environmental impacts over the long-term. The module discussed in this paper is thus designed to teach engineering students ways to consider environmental impacts in economic analyses. The module provides a brief introduction to how traditional economics falls short of sustainability, through the Tragedy of the Commons and externalities. It then discusses several solutions, including triple bottom line accounting, life cycle cost analysis, and inclusion of environmental benefits in cost-benefit analysis. The module includes objectives, PowerPoint lecture slides, discussion questions, homework problems, and assessment questions, all available for engineering economy instructors to download from the internet in a "grab-and-go" ready format, for easy incorporation into their courses. The module, which requires one class period, has been implemented for 4 semesters at the University of Texas at Arlington, in two junior-level courses: "Economics for Engineers," a required course in Industrial Engineering, and "Construction & Value Engineering," a required course in Civil Engineering. Student surveys conducted for 3 of these semesters indicate that for 5 of the 7 module objectives, at least 50% of students were "Strongly Confident" or "Confident" of their ability to address the objective. These relatively low levels of confidence were likely due at least partially to the fact that the project PIs and graduate students presenting the module were guest instructors in the engineering economics classes. This meant that the instructors typically did not assign the module homework problems or use the module assessment questions in their exams. If the engineering economics course instructor were implementing the module, and assigning associated homework problems, student confidence would presumably increase. Moreover, we plan to modify the module to focus on micro-economic objectives, thus covering fewer objectives but covering them more effectively. In addition, a pre-test and post-test were administered for 2 semesters in the industrial engineering course, to assess the degree to which module objectives were achieved. The mean of the post-test scores exceeded that of the pre-test scores by 97.5% and 99.5% levels of confidence in the two semesters. The "Life Cycle Sustainability Economics" module was one of 11 sustainability modules developed and implemented in undergraduate engineering courses as part of the Engineering Sustainable Engineers program at University of Texas at Arlington, sponsored by National Science Foundation. The program was designed to improve undergraduate student knowledge of and competency in addressing sustainability issues in engineering design and problem solving, and involves collaboration among faculty in Civil, Industrial, and Mechanical Engineering. © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education.