A new initiative to introduce sustainability into the College of Engineering’s curriculum aims to ensure that every undergraduate engineering student learns about sustainability in a manner relevant to their major while they’re at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Civil and Environmental Engineering Associate Professor Andrea Hicks and Chemical and Biological Engineering Assistant Professor Styliana Avraamidou are leading the Undergraduate Sustainability Engineering Education project.
To make the change, Hicks and Avraamidou have recruited instructors for classes across all of the College of Engineering’s majors, and in biological systems engineering in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, that are natural choices to add relevant lessons about sustainability.
“We had the idea to meet with faculty who are teaching required classes that already look like they might be good fits to see if they’re interested,” Hicks says. “So it’s a bottom-up approach, and the idea is that all of the undergraduates get exposed to sustainability in a way that’s sympathetic to their field. I think that’s more impactful for our students than just taking the same sustainability class across the board.”
Avraamidou and Hicks will hold a kick-off meeting in the fall 2025 semester for the project, which officially begins in September. They’ll plan with interested faculty throughout the fall semester and want to begin trialing classes in the spring 2026 semester. Both professors teach suitable classes: Hicks teaches CEE 494: Civil and Environmental Decision Making; and Avraamidou teaches CBE 450: Process Design and CBE 470: Process Dynamics and Control.
The three-year project, which is supported by the National Science Foundation, uses the Engineering for One Planet framework, which aligns with ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) requirements.
Hicks says ABET already requires some departments, like Civil and Environmental Engineering, to incorporate sustainability into their curriculum. Others, like Chemical and Biological Engineering, have been preparing to incorporate sustainability education, so the project came at an opportune time to bolster those efforts.
Sustainability often brings to mind a focus on environmentally friendly practices. While that is a part of it, Avraamidou and Hicks say the concept extends to economic and societal considerations. Each of the three “legs” of sustainability—environment, economy, society—can interact with the other.
Hicks says sustainability, in short, is about smart resource stewardship. This includes ideas such as the circular economy, which seeks to minimize waste by recycling, remanufacturing or otherwise reusing products and materials for as long as possible. It can include ensuring that production and supply chains have enough materials to remain resilient in the face of shocks like the COVID pandemic. It can explore how to best use materials for which the United States might not have tremendous domestic supplies.
“A key learning objective for the students will be to develop systems thinking – learning to see beyond the boundaries of their designs and understand how engineering choices influence broader systems,” Avraamidou says. “That influence might be environmental, but it also extends to economic and social dimensions—it’s not just about reducing greenhouse gas emissions; it’s about recognizing the complexity and interconnectedness of the systems we’re part of.”
Avraamidou and Hicks want to integrate sustainability into the undergraduate education experience in a way that suits each major. Avraamidou says embedding the lessons into core classes in different majors could make them more interesting and applicable to students as they progress through their education and begin their careers.
“One piece of feedback I often get from students is that they know sustainability is important, but they don’t really understand how to use it,” Hicks says. “So the goal here is that we go beyond just saying this is important to teaching them this is how you might think about this in your discipline so that you can take it with you when you go out into the real world.”
Hicks is the Keith and Jane Nosbusch Associate Professorship in Engineering Education and the Hanson Family Fellow in Sustainability. Avraamidou is the Duane H. and Dorothy M. Bluemke Assistant Professor.