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Emergency housing has become a necessity in Puerto Rico due to the size and frequency of extreme natural events such as earthquakes and hurricanes that affect the island. The Resilient Infrastructure and Sustainability Education – Undergraduate Program (RISE-UP), funded by National Science Foundation (NSF) has developed an interdisciplinary curricular sequence to educate students to design infrastructure to withstand the impact of natural disasters. Three campuses of our university system collaborate in this interdisciplinary effort. Participating students, pursuing undergraduate degrees in engineering, architecture, and surveying, take courses together and participate in co-curricular activities (both online and in person through field visits). RISE-UP integrates servingness as a tool that contributes to the formation of students’ sensibility to social dynamics connected to the educational experiences. The final course of the curricular sequence was designed to integrate servingness by addressing aspects connected to the learning experience including leadership identity, critical consciousness, and civic engagement all in the context of Puerto Rico’s current infrastructural needs. During the final course, students apply the knowledge gained in the program to provide a solution to a design problem. The spring 2021 semester exercise was the design of a set of emergency houses based on a repeated unit. The houses' design requirements include environmental considerations, rainwater management, the use of natural ventilation, electric power autonomy during blackouts and structural stability of the units to face both seismic and wind loads. This paper discusses the semester project and presents the design solutions of the interdisciplinary groups of students who took part in the course. It also discusses the results of a survey whose goal was to explore the perception of the students about their achievements when taking part in the course and the dynamics seen in the course related to servingess and collaboration.
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Evaluating core competencies and learning outcomes for training the next generation of sustainability researchers
The need to train sustainability scientists and engineers to address the complex problems of our world has never been more apparent. We organized an interdisciplinary team of instructors from universities in the states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island who designed, taught, and assessed a multi-university course to develop the core competencies necessary for advancing sustainability solutions. Lessons from the course translate across sustainability contexts, but our specific focus was on the issues and trade-offs associated with dams. Dams provide numerous water, energy, and cultural services to society while exacting an ecological toll that disrupts the flow of water, fish, and sediment in rivers. Like many natural resource management challenges, effective dam decisions require collaboration among diverse stakeholders and disciplines. We linked key sustainability principles and practices related to interdisciplinarity, stakeholder engagement, and problem-solving to student learning outcomes that are generalizable beyond our dam-specific context. Students and instructors co-created class activities to build capacity for interdisciplinary collaboration and encourage student leadership and creativity. Assessment results show that students responded positively to activities related to stakeholder engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly when practicing nested discussion and intrapersonal reflection. These activities helped broaden students’ perspectives on sustainability problems and built greater capacity for constructive communication and student leadership.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1539071
- PAR ID:
- 10108388
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Sustainability Science
- ISSN:
- 1862-4065
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-019-00707-7
