ASEE News


ASEE Awards 14 Grants to Infuse Sustainability in Engineering Education

Press Contact:
Rafael Gerena
Chief Marketing and Communications Officer
r.gerena@asee.org
 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

Washington, D.C. – May 4, 2023

The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) is excited to announce the 14 awardees of its second cohort in the Engineering for One Planet Mini-Grants Program (EOP-MGP). Teams of educators from diverse engineering programs are each to be awarded $8,000 to pursue new ways to integrate sustainability into their programs. ASEE received more than 100 applications for this initiative.

The ASEE grants are supported by The Lemelson Foundation as part of its Engineering for One Planet (EOP) initiative, which seeks to establish sustainability as a core tenet of the engineering profession by equipping all future engineers with the skills and knowledge to support the health of the planet and the lives it sustains. The program leverages the EOP Framework, a menu of ABET-aligned student learning outcomes co-developed by dozens of academic, industry, nonprofit and public sector stakeholders and tested through pilot grants. The EOP Framework offers 96 learning outcomes reflecting social and environmental sustainability topics, such as systems thinking, social responsibility and life-cycle assessment, and related professional skills such as communications, teamwork and critical thinking.

The 14 new awardees join the 13 awardees from the 2022 EOP-MGP cohort that infused sustainability learning outcomes from the EOP Framework into their programs. The success of the 2022 EOP-MGP led to a two-year extension grant from The Lemelson Foundation as well as longitudinal evaluation and equity training for the award selection committee.

EOP recognizes the importance of including people from historically marginalized and low-income communities who are disproportionately negatively affected by climate and environmental degradation as partners in creating change. As such, a key goal of the EOP-MGP is to engage and elevate diverse faculty and institutions. Six of the 14 grants were awarded to Minority-Serving Institutions as follows: three Hispanic-Serving Institutions, one Historically Black College and University, and two Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions. The teams are geographically dispersed and represent a mix of institutional sizes and programs, including engineering and non-engineering disciplines. Faculty are also ethnically and racially diverse.

The Awardees (Institutions—Principal Investigators):

  • Kettering University—Susan Farhat
  • Lawrence Technological University—Elin Jensen
  • Manhattan College—Qian Wang
  • North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University —Nelson A. Granda Marulanda
  • New York University Tandon School of Engineering—Ingrid Paredes
  • Oakland University—Sarah Beetham
  • Purdue University Northwest—Aref Yadollahi and Kimia Mortezaei
  • Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi—Ruby Mehrubeoglu
  • Texas Tech University—Paul Egan
  • The Ohio State University—Cherish C. Vance
  • University of Colorado Boulder—Katherine Ramos
  • University of Pennsylvania—Dustyn Roberts
  • Virginia Commonwealth University—Radhika Barua
  • Western New England University—Devina Jaiswal

For more information about this program, visit https://eop-mgp.asee.org or contact the ASEE project team at eop-mgp@asee.org. For more information about Engineering for One Planet, visit https://www.engineeringforoneplanet.org.

About ASEE
Founded in 1893, the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) is a nonprofit organization of individuals and institutions committed to furthering education in engineering and engineering technology. ASEE develops policies and programs that enhance professional opportunities for engineering faculty members and promotes activities that support increased student enrollments in engineering and engineering technology colleges and universities. ASEE also collaborates with national and international organizations to advance its mission.
 
About The Lemelson Foundation
Based in Portland, Oregon, The Lemelson Foundation uses the power of invention to improve lives. Inspired by the belief that invention can solve many of the biggest economic and social challenges of our time, the Foundation helps the next generation of inventors and invention-based businesses to flourish. The Lemelson Foundation was established in the early 1990s by prolific inventor Jerome Lemelson and his wife, Dorothy. To date, the Foundation has made grants totaling more than $300 million in support of its mission. In 2020, The Lemelson Foundation launched Engineering for One Planet in partnership with VentureWell and with the collaboration of hundreds of stakeholders. For more information, visit www.lemelson.org and www.engineeringforoneplanet.org.