Project Category: UN Sustainable Development Goals

Dr. Griendling’s primary objective for this project was to help students place aerospace in the global context, exploring both the positive and negative impacts of aerospace systems from the outset of their education. By fostering an early awareness of how aerospace technology intersects with large-scale societal outcomes, the goal was to cultivate ethical, globally minded thinkers who are able to better understand and evaluate the societal impacts of their aerospace designs. This approach aims to prepare students to consider broader implications as they progress through their future courses and careers.

Dr. Griendling explained that she made a lot of changes to her initial plan. She had initially planned to focus only on Advanced Air Mobility.  However, she realized that she wanted to broaden to include other aspects of aerospace spread throughout the course. She decided to shift to a series of smaller case studies with broader exposure.

The biggest benefit that Dr. Griendling observed was hard to evaluate quantitatively, but very clear to her in the classroom. As compared to previously, she felt like the student engagement was higher and the questions were deeper and more conceptually challenging. The questions she received from students demonstrated that they were more able to connect the technical content to the real world and were more aware of the potential wider impacts of aerospace systems.

It was presented at a workshop during Sustainability Week in Spring of 2024.

The project’s goals were focused on SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), and 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) in EAS 4803: EAS & Policy. The content and especially guest speakers were designed to expose the students to information related to these goals. The course design also incorporated connections to SDG goals 13 (Climate Action) and 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) throughout all class discussions and gave students practice with plain language summaries.

Class discussions prompted students to explore campus policies in relation to various SDGs around the world, USA, Georgia, and our campus. Activities have students exploring the different ways that Tech was already trying to achieve the SDG goals and in what ways more effort could be made. The final project required students to complete an information sheet about an assigned SDG, which deepened their knowledge of the selected SDG and their surrounding community.

Dr. Wilson evaluated students’ understanding of SDGs at the start and end of the course to see how their knowledge expanded of the goals and related policies. Students were also evaluated throughout the semester and Dr. Wilson provided feedback on how to improve the pain language summaries to make them more accessible. The course was also designed to be accessible to all majors, which allowed for more connections and partnerships between different majors.

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Develop a three-week set of experiments examining alternative energy technologies and the chemistry involved in them. This goal is aligned with several of the Sustainability Next Education Strategies, primarily by providing opportunities to students across a diverse range of degree programs to learn experientially through lab experiments.

Conducting a pilot round of experiments in the CHEM 1211 lab. Eventual migration to the CHEM 1310 lab. Recognizing that there is room to further develop SDG related experiments and incorporate them into the CHEM 1211 lab. In further implementation, this will be done in a way that ties in well to the goals of the given student demographic to increase their motivation to learn and apply sustainability concepts.

Conducting a pilot round of experiments in the CHEM 1211 lab. Eventual migration to the CHEM 1310 lab. Recognizing that there is room to further develop SDG related experiments and incorporate them into the CHEM 1211 lab. In further implementation, this will be done in a way that ties in well to the goals of the given student demographic to increase their motivation to learn and apply sustainability concepts.

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The goal of this project is to expand SDG concept and skill integration across the undergraduate curriculum, the goal of this project is to redesign ME 1670 (Introduction to Engineering Graphics and Design) course to incorporate sustainability concepts and competencies with SDGs. The opportunities to engage with the UN SDGs in the classroom are facilitated by socio-technical project-based learning with Computer Aided Design (CAD) activities. The proposed course redesign advances Georgia Tech’s strategic plan is to provide all students with transformative learning experiences to grow as creative, ethical, globally aware, technologically sophisticated leaders who can define and solve problems to improve the human condition.

• Modification of Individual Projects: Creative Ideation with CAD – 3D Print with a focus on form design include product design with external representations promoting sustainable and responsible resource consumption (SDG 12)  
• Modification of Team Projects: Humanitarian designs with context of Large Engineering structures with a focus on functional design in CAD (SDGs 3, 6, 7, 11, 13, 14 and 15) 
• View sample student projects here. 

The post-activity reflection study on SDG-focused design projects indicates a substantial impact on students’ learning. In Fall 2023, Across a total of 207 survey responses regarding the contextual factors and associated specifications and constraints taken into consideration in the design of a sustainable products and structures, various umbrella categories, including environmental, social, economic, and health issues were addressed. By far, most student projects targeted environmental concerns, with over 80 student responses mentioning specific issues to tackle such as clean water and energy, food waste, plastic pollution, oil spills, ocean preservation and marine ecosystems, rainforest conservation, sustainability. Additionally, over 32 cases mentioned social issues including cities and communities, differently abled people, urban environments, low-income communities, humanitarian efforts and disaster relief, starvation and hunger, and infrastructure, while over 23 cases addressed economic concerns like affordable energy, cost-effective product solutions, and long-term economic resilience. Finally, at least 9 responses mentioned health issues such as microplastic pollution, access to clean water, fighting disease, mental health and well-being, and zero hunger. Note also that several student responses indicated that their projects addressed multiple contextual factors at once, such as tackling clean and affordable energy (both environmental and economic.

At ASEE annual conferences.

The goal of Dr. Moon’s project was to develop a new class related to sustainability reporting. This class aligns closely with several of GT’s strategies outlined in the Sustainability Next plan. Namely, the new course is devoted to teaching students how to read and interpret sustainability reports, including topics like GHG accounting, third party assurance, and the importance of third-party intermediaries. These skills align with Strategy 1. The class will also have an experiential component which aligns with Strategy 3 through case studies and guest presenters.

Throughout the implementation of the project, the specifics of Dr. Moon’s class changed, though the end goals did not. The biggest change is that he elected to use a textbook, which was not yet available when he initially applied for the grant. He decided to use the textbook because it brought the key concepts into a cohesive package that facilitated the comprehensive nature of the course. The book is titled “Business Sustainability Reporting & Analysis”, authored by Patricia Dechow and Richard Sloan (ISBN 978-1-61853-655-6).

As the class had not started yet, there wasn’t a way for him to directly report on the impact. However, Dr. Moon explains that it has changed how he views companies’ sustainability reports and gave him a better understanding of the evolution of the accounting industry (which is pushing more and more in to the sustainability reporting space). 

A post describing the class was displayed in the Scheller College (outside the Anderson Center for Sustainable Business) during SDG week.