Project Grant 2430790

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a Project Grant totaling $349,410 to Harvey Mudd College under the NSF Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) for the project "Prototyping a Systems Thinking Framework to Foster Environmental and Sociotechnical Thinking Across an Interdisciplinary Engineering Curriculum". The goal of this 3-year project is to design, develop, implement, and assess a systems thinking framework that undergraduate engineering students can apply to coursework, projects, and professional practice to evaluate the environmental, social, and ethical implications of engineering technologies. The framework will be deployed in 5-7 activities across engineering courses and an industry-partnered capstone design project, equipping students to consider sustainability and sociotechnical factors in their engineering decision-making. In parallel, the project will examine how a distributed, coordinated prototyping process can help faculty address sustainability and social impacts in their courses. The expected outcomes include students demonstrating increased use of systems thinking to assess environmental, social, and ethical implications, as well as faculty showing improved self-efficacy towards instructing on these topics. The framework and modular course activities will be co-created with faculty partners and made publicly available under a Creative Commons license.