Columbus, Ohio
June 24, 2017
June 24, 2017
June 28, 2017
Environmental Engineering
Diversity
18
10.18260/1-2--28266
https://strategy.asee.org/28266
595
Freya Willicks is a scientific researcher at the Center for Learning and Knowledge Management (ZLW) in the Cybernetic Labs IMA/ZLW & IfU at RWTH Aachen University, Germany (e-mail: freya.willicks@ima-zlw-ifu.rwth-aachen.de).
Dr. Kathrin Schönefeld is a scientific researcher at the Cybernetics Lab IMA/ZLW & IfU at RWTH Aachen University, Germany.
Valerie Stehling is a research group leader of the research group "Academic Teaching and Learning" at the Institute of Information Management in Mechanical Engineering and Center for Learning and Knowledge Management.
Prof. Dr. phil. Anja Richert
Managing Director of the Center for Learning and Knowledge Management (ZLW), RWTH Aachen University; Junior Professorship for Agile Management in Organization and Technology in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, RWTH Aachen University
Anja Richert took up the position of managing director of the Center for Learning and Knowledge Management of the RWTH Aachen University in February 2011. With a doctorate in Communication Science, she has been working at the IMA/ZLW & IfU Institute Cluster since 2003, from 2008 to 2010 as manager of the Business and Research Division: Knowledge Management. In 2004 Anja Richert completed her degree in Communication Science with a distinction at the RWTH Aachen University. In December 2007, she gained her doctorate in the field of e-learning, likewise with a distinction. In the years 2010 and 2011 she received the International E-Learning Award (IELA) for the projects ROLE and RELOAD with the e-learning solutions developed under her leadership. Furthermore, she is a lecturer at the Mechanical Engineering Faculty of the RWTH Aachen University for a course on learning and work habits (compulsory elective subject for the degree course in Mechanical Engineering). Her main areas of research are the development of agile turbulence-tolerant processes and organizational concepts for knowledge and technology-intensive organizations, the development of knowledge management solutions and e-learning tools (e.g. knowledge maps) for various fields, as well as accompanying research for complex organizational development processes in heterogeneous research networks.
Sabina Jeschke became head of the IMA/ZLW & IfU Institute Cluster of the RWTH Aachen University in June 2009. She studied Physics, Computer Science and Mathematics at the Berlin University of Technology. After research stays at the NASA Ames Research Center/ California and the Georgia Institute of Technology/Atlanta, she gained a doctorate on “Mathematics in Virtual Knowledge Environments” in 2004. Following a junior professorship (2005-2007) at the TU Berlin with the construction and direction of its media center, she was head of the Institute of Information Technology Services (IITS) for electrical engineering at the University of Stuttgart from May 2007 to May 2009, where she was also the director of the Central Information Technology Services (RUS) at the same time. Some of the main areas of her research are complex IT-systems (e.g. cloud computing, Internet of Things, green IT & ET, semantic web services), robotics and automation (e.g. heterogeneous and cooperative robotics, cooperative agents, web services for robotics), traffic and mobility (autonomous and semi-autonomous traffic systems, international logistics, car2car & car2X models) and virtual worlds for research alliances (e.g. virtual and remote laboratories, intelligent assistants, semantic coding of specialised information). Sabina Jeschke is vice dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the RWTH Aachen University, chairwoman of the board of management of the VDI Aachen and member of the supervisory board of the Körber AG. She is a member and consultant of numerous committees and commissions, alumni of the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes), IEEE Senior Member and Fellow of the RWTH Aachen University. In July 2014, the Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI) honoured her with their award Deutschlands digitale Köpfe (Germany's digital heads). In September 2015 she was awarded the Nikola-Tesla Chain by the International Society of Engineering Pedagogy (IGIP) for her outstanding achievements in the field of engineering pedagogy.
Dr. Frank Hees is the vice deputy head of the Cybernetics Lab IMA/ZLW & IfU. In addition to this, he is managing partner and consultant of the Nets ’n’ Clouds Consulting für Technologieentwicklung und Organisationsoptimierung GmbH (Consulting for Technology Development and Organisational Optimisation). He has been working at the Cybernetics Lab since 1997, where he was head of the Communication and Organisational Development division from 1999 to 2010 and of the Knowledge Management division from 2003 to 2006.
Dr. Hees studied Economic Geography, Politics and International Technical and Economic Cooperation at RWTH Aachen. He completed his thesis on “Regional Organisational Structures in the Building and Construction Industry – Generating Turbulence-tolerant Strategic Alliances Based on the Example of Tradesmen Networks” at the Georg-August University in Göttingen in 2001. The main focuses of his work are strategy consulting, knowledge management in companies and networks, staff and organisational development, team development and individual coaching of executives, supporting change processes, analysis and reorganisation of participation and empowerment processes and training on the subjects of project and time management, creativity, systematic management, change management, network and knowledge management, qualifying people for participation, and overseeing work processes.
The twenty-first century is highly influenced by globalization, climate change and an increasing dependence on technologies. Education in general needs to foster these trends, but especially engineering education needs to impart knowledge about the necessity and the possibilities of sustainable development to students. The Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Challenge offers an innovative opportunity to integrate sustainability into engineering curricula. Although the EWB Challenge is well established in other countries, the participating university is the only university in Germany that has implemented the EWB Challenge into the engineering curricula so far. This paper aims at presenting the process of implementing the EWB Challenge in Germany. In the course of this implementation, the concept was evaluated with the help of a standardized questionnaire; an overview of the results gained from this evaluation is provided in this paper as well. The evaluation served to gain diverse information e.g. about the perception of the challenge in general, its impact on the amount of knowledge gained by the students, and also about the challenge’s potentials for improvement. First analyses show, that the overall quality of the EWB Challenge at the participating university was marked as “good”. Asides from that, the analyses also indicate that the students most benefit from a great amount of gained knowledge and their improved ability to adapt technologies depending on the situational context and the underlying social and cultural structures. Yet, the results show that there are also aspects of the challenge-concept that need some improvement. One of these aspects is to enhance the students’ awareness of the social responsibilities of engineers.
Willicks, F., & Schoenefeld, K., & Varney, V., & Richert, A., & Jeschke, S., & Hees, F. (2017, June), Engineers Without Borders Challenge: Implementing Sustainability in German Engineering Education Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--28266
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2017 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015