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Jan E. DeWaters
Institute of STEM Ed, Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY 13699, USA

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Short Biography

Jan DeWaters is an Associate Professor at Clarkson University, with a joint position in the Institute for STEM Education and the School of Engineering. Her research interests focus on the impact of evidence-based pedagogies on students’ learning, competencies, and attitudes toward STEM studies and careers.

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Case report
Published: 29 August 2021 in Sustainability
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Engineering graduates must be prepared to support our world’s need for a clean and sustainable energy future. Complex problems related to energy and sustainability require engineers to consider the broad spectrum of interrelated consequences including human and environmental health, sociopolitical, and economic factors. Teaching engineering students about energy within a societal context, simultaneous with developing technical knowledge and skills, will better prepare them to solve real-world problems. Yet few energy courses that approach energy topics from a human-centered perspective exist within engineering programs. Engineering students enrolled in energy programs often take such courses as supplemental to their course of study. This paper presents an engineering course that approaches energy education from a socio-technical perspective, emphasizing the complex interactions of energy technologies with sustainability dimensions. Course content and learning activities are structured around learning outcomes that require students to gain technical knowledge as well as an understanding of broader energy-related impacts. The course attracts students from a variety of majors and grade levels. A mixed quantitative/qualitative assessment conducted from 2019–2021 indicates successful achievement of course learning outcomes. Students demonstrated significant gains in technical content knowledge as well as the ability to critically address complex sociotechnical issues related to current and future energy systems.

ACS Style

Jan DeWaters; Susan Powers; Felicity Bilow. An Introductory Energy Course to Promote Broad Energy Education for Undergraduate Engineering Students. Sustainability 2021, 13, 9693 .

AMA Style

Jan DeWaters, Susan Powers, Felicity Bilow. An Introductory Energy Course to Promote Broad Energy Education for Undergraduate Engineering Students. Sustainability. 2021; 13 (17):9693.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Jan DeWaters; Susan Powers; Felicity Bilow. 2021. "An Introductory Energy Course to Promote Broad Energy Education for Undergraduate Engineering Students." Sustainability 13, no. 17: 9693.

Journal article
Published: 28 August 2021 in Sustainability
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Engineers must take a leading role in addressing the challenges of mitigating climate change and adapting to the inevitable changes that our world is facing. To improve climate literacy, technical education must include problem formulation and solutions that consider complex interactions between engineered, Earth, and societal systems, including trade-offs among benefits, costs, and risks. Improving engineering students’ climate literacy must also inspire students’ motivation to work toward climate solutions. This paper highlights the content and pedagogical approach used in a class for engineering students that helped contribute to significant gains in engineering students’ climate literacy and critical thinking competencies. A total of 89 students fully participated in a pre/post climate literacy questionnaire over four years of study. As a whole, students demonstrated significant gains in climate-related content knowledge, affect, and behavior. Substantial differences were observed between students in different engineering disciplines and male vs. female students. Assessment of critical thinking showed that students did an excellent job formulating problem statements and solutions in a manner that incorporated a multidimensional systems perspective. These skills are critical for students to address climate change effectively in their eventual professions.

ACS Style

Susan E. Powers; Jan E. DeWaters; Suresh Dhaniyala. Climate Literacy—Imperative Competencies for Tomorrow’s Engineers. Sustainability 2021, 13, 9684 .

AMA Style

Susan E. Powers, Jan E. DeWaters, Suresh Dhaniyala. Climate Literacy—Imperative Competencies for Tomorrow’s Engineers. Sustainability. 2021; 13 (17):9684.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Susan E. Powers; Jan E. DeWaters; Suresh Dhaniyala. 2021. "Climate Literacy—Imperative Competencies for Tomorrow’s Engineers." Sustainability 13, no. 17: 9684.