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Integrating Social and Environmental Justice into the Program Educational Objectives of California Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department

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Conference

2022 ASEE Zone IV Conference

Location

Vancouver

Publication Date

May 12, 2022

Start Date

May 12, 2022

End Date

May 14, 2022

Conference Session

Engineering and Society

Tagged Topic

Conference Submission

Page Count

14

DOI

10.18260/1-2--44743

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/44743

Download Count

173

Paper Authors

biography

Rebekah Oulton P.E. California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

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Rebekah Oulton is an Associate Professor at California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She started in Fall of 2013 after completing her PhD in Environmental Engineering at the University o

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biography

Amro El Badawy California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

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Dr. Amro El Badawy is an Environmental Engineering Assistant Professor at California Polytechnic State University

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Abstract

After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, an undergraduate student coalition in the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CE/ENVE) Department at [Institution] proposed that the curriculum be updated to address the topics of social and environmental justice and their role in Civil and Environmental Engineering. As a result, the CE/ENVE faculty collaborated with the student leaders to integrate social and environmental justice into the CE/ENVE program educational objectives (PEOs). PEOs reflect the goals that program graduates will achieve within a few years of graduation, reflect the mission of the Department, and provide guidance for specific student learning outcomes in the classrooms. As such, they are the principle tool for guiding lasting and significant modifications to the curriculum. As part of the student-initiated PEOs revitalization, additional educational objectives were incorporated, including: resilient, sustainable, and safe design; systems-thinking; and, inclusive communications. This paper discusses the bottom-up, student-centric process used for updating the CE/ENVE PEOs, the stakeholders involved, and the students’ key contributions to the process. A comparison between the revitalized PEOs and the original PEOs are presented. The focus of the work encompasses the challenges encountered during this experience and the lessons learned. Finally, this paper outlines the CE/ENVE Department’s plan to integrate the new PEOs into the curriculum, including specific examples of implementation of the PEOs into selected courses and development of appropriate metrics for student outcomes. This update of the PEOs is a critical step towards re-shaping the CE/ENVE curriculum to educate the students about social justice and its strong connection to engineering design and practice. The new PEOs will result in a modern CE/ENVE curriculum that helps students develop the knowledge and skills needed to address the contemporary challenges facing the world.

Oulton, R., & El Badawy, A. (2022, May), Integrating Social and Environmental Justice into the Program Educational Objectives of California Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Zone IV Conference, Vancouver. 10.18260/1-2--44743

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