Sustainable Product Design: Designing for Diversity in Engineering Education*

Abstract

Current and future engineers will need to address sustainability’s triple bottom line, simultaneously addressing financial, environmental, and social goals. There is also a need to improve diversity in engineering, both in the communities served by new technology and the representation of gender and ethnic minorities among engineering professionals. We present data gathered from “Engineering 10: Introduction to Engineering Design and Analysis”. This freshman course included a six-week Mechanical Engineering module entitled “Sustainable Human-Centered Design”, and aimed to teach both Human-Centered Design techniques as well as the principles of Sustainable Design. We investigated these students ’ experiences, confidence, and goals,