CLEARWATERS: Educating for sustainability

Sustainable development, described by the Brundtland Commission as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations," provides a framework in which communities can use resources efficiently, create efficient infrastructures, protect and enhance the quality of life, and create new businesses to strengthen their economies (US Dept. of Energy). Society is beginning to recognize that traditional approaches have led to congestion, pollution, and resource over-consumption, but sustainable development offers lasting solutions that will help strengthen the future.

To take steps towards this type of development, society as a whole needs to pass two main stages:

Ignorance where the environmental problems are unknown

Apathy where the environmental problems are known, but people do not care about them.

Once these barriers are surmounted, society can begin to adopt more environmentally benign practices and manufacturing processes.

Learning

Educating different levels of society about sustainability will be a challenging yet essential part of the development process. In the past and until recently, the approach to environmental waste involved an end-of-pipe mindset. The pollution generated from a particular product or manufacturing process was considered only after the product or process was designed. This is the “cradle-to-grave” model.

Society largely follows a take-use-dispose practice.

Following the cradle-to-grave pattern, resources flow in just one direction: from the earth into manufacturing products and finally into landfills and incinerators. Many of the original materials are unrecoverable. The recycling and reuse of materials were not designed as part of the development processes of many products, making these processes expensive and difficult.

Over the past few decades, forward-thinking leaders have realized that it makes more sense to prevent the pollution or to manufacture a more environmentally friendly process rather than manage the pollution after it has already been generated. The new model that is starting to be followed is known as “cradle-to-cradle.” With it, the waste from consumers and producers becomes input for other consumers and producers. Resources are cycled through the system.

Moving from cradle-to-grave to a cradle-to-cradle system of materials use will not happen overnight. This transition will be quite challenging since a large part of society still has the end-of-pipe mindset. However, changes will need to be made and a better understanding of why this transition will benefit society will have to be explained.

Role of higher education

Obviously, schools and universities will have to play a major role in helping to make this transition happen by introducing new tools and concepts. Some of the tools being used and developed to facilitate this shift include:

More universities need to provide programs that build upon these changes.

EvMM students Brendan Williamson, Hilary Grimes, and Anahita Ahmadi in classroom with Dr. Thomas Theis (principal investigator of EvMM)

A model program

I was lucky a few years back when I was selecting a graduate school. I found that Clarkson University had recently developed a program that places manufacturing in the cradle-to-cradle model. I joined, and I am currently finishing my second year of research for a doctoral degree.

The Environmental Manufacturing Management program (EvMM) at Clarkson University is a new paradigm of graduate education and research. The program is supported by the National Science Foundation as part of the IGERT (Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship) program. EvMM incorporates the concepts of systems analysis, product and process redesign, and sustainability into solving current industrial problems. It is one of the very few such programs in the United States.

Characteristics of EvMM

EvMM has several features. First, it is attracting students of diverse backgrounds to doctoral studies. EvMM is referred to as a “disciplinary-plus” program; that is, prospective students matriculate in any of Clarkson's doctoral programs, completing their research under the auspices of EvMM. Thus, students should have the appropriate background that is acceptable to the degree program to which they are applying. For example, if students were applying to the civil and environmental engineering department, their requirements would be different than those if they were applying to chemistry. Prospective students are not limited to participating in a doctoral program. They can also enter the program as a masters of science student in management systems.

EvMM encourages students to take a team-based approach to solving problems. This provides a real-world setting and is a great advantage to the students because they learn early that work is often executed with a team of people from many different backgrounds and with varying expertise.

Second, EvMM supports an interdisciplinary approach to doctoral studies. Traditional doctoral study programs emphasize work under the guidance of a single mentor, concentrate on a narrow topic of research, and list courses only relevant to this single topic. EvMM, however, encourages its students to have multiple mentors (faculty advising from across the university along with mentors from industry) and pursue topics of research in disciplines other than their own.

Along with the classes required for each discipline, each student takes four core EvMM classes: environmental systems analysis and design, industrial ecology, risk analysis and communication, and environmental economics.

Third, and one of its greatest advantages, EvMM students conduct research in conjunction with industrial partners using a group approach. Each class of students participates in an internship with a specific industry for 2 to 3 months during the summer. Students learn about the manufacturing process of different products, along with their waste management issues. The objective of this internship is not just experience, but it also gives students the opportunity to develop a research area from which their theses can be derived.

Fourth, students develop skills that allow them to approach a research problem using a systems format. This involves defining the system and its boundaries, understanding how its components function together, mathematically or physically modeling the system, applying specific constraints, formulating an objective (for example maximizing profit, minimizing waste), and solving the problem.

Finally, students facilitate the transfer of their research results to practice by making recommendations to the decision-maker at the specific industry based on their final results.

Job prospects

The NSF IGERT program was conceived after looking at the ways Ph.D.s were being employed in comparison to the way they were trained. About 70% ended up in nonacademic areas upon graduation but had been trained as if they were all going to universities. EvMM was developed to meet the challenges of educating Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the multidisciplinary backgrounds and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. Many employers have stated that they want people who are exposed to many different areas so that they can converse across traditional disciplines, rather than stay within a narrow specialty.

Co-evolution

The EvMM program at Clarkson is an excellent example of the type of academic program that must evolve both to educate society on sustainable development concepts and to provide industry with individuals trained to implement sustainability concepts and practices. It is not necessary, though, to wait until graduate school to begin the learning. Terms such as sustainability and industrial ecology can be mentioned to age groups as young as high school students and be explained in detail at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

What is certain, however, is that educators must find ways to prepare students for the challenges of a new environmental paradigm. Among many other things, the attainment of sustainable development in society will require restructuring the academic system to focus in an interdisciplinary fashion on the life-cycle of goods and services. As new generations of engineers and managers are educated, they will bring practices that promote sustainability from the academy to the shop floor.
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Anahita Ahmadi is a doctoral student in the Environmental Manufacturing Management program at Clarkson University.

Click here for more information on EvMM (opens new browser window).