Sustainable Development as a Challenge of Engineering Education

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to research the ways of integrating sustainable de-velopment into study programs of engineering faculties in an international con-text, as well as to analyse the current state of engineering education for sustaina-ble development at the universities of the Republic of Serbia. Therefore, a desk-top research, as well as an analysis of the engineering education curricula, have been conducted. The results of the research indicated to two possible approaches to the integration of sustainable development into the engineering curricula – in the form of special subjects dedicated to the problems of sustainable development in the engineering, or as an integrative approach which implies that sustainable development becomes an integral part of the entire curriculum. Subjects dedicat-ed to sustainable development have been identified at all universities, but not at all faculties where engineers are educated in the Republic of Serbia, they are present at all levels of study (undergraduate, master, doctoral), as well as within applied, integrated and specialist studies, and by status they are most often elec-tive. The results confirm that the engineering curricula open up towards the ques-tions of sustainable development both in international context, and in higher edu-cation of the Republic of Serbia and as such, they can serve to the relevant minis-tries of education and science, universities and engineering faculties as a rec-ommendation in which way to plan and design higher education of engineers in the future in order to provide overall support in the integration of sustainability into the engineering.