Implementing Resilience and Sustainability into Undergraduate Engineering Curricula: A Qualitative Study with Faculty

Abstract

This study investigates the concurrent implementation of resilience and sustainability concepts into undergraduate engineering curricula. Specifically, it examines the instructional strategies the faculty adopted, the most important aspects and applications of the two concepts, and the challenges faced in implementation. A qualitative study using semi-structured interviews was conducted with eight faculty members from four engineering disciplines. Faculty members employed various instructional strategies such as general discussions, project-based learning, and guest lectures. They considered practicality, the triple bottom line principle, and liability and environmental issues to be the most important aspects of sustainability. They also considered resiliency and rapidity or time recovery to be the most important aspects of resilience. Time constraint was the most common challenge for implementing resilience and sustainability. Packed curricula, struggles in finding the right strategy, students’ lack of motivation, and difficulty in teaching such concepts in introductory courses were also major challenges. As a result, students showed improvements in knowledge and attitudes, particularly regarding sustainability. This study offers practical insights for embedding both concepts into engineering education and recommends further research into instructional strategies and documentation to support integration.

1. Introduction

Across various disciplines, the definition of resilience includes the common themes of “ability, capacity, system(s), disaster, recover, social, absorb, change, vulnerability, and adapt” [1] (p. 846). The resilience of a system or systemic resilience refers to the system’s ability to absorb disruption, maintain self-organization, and avoid exceeding thresholds and irreversible change [2,3]. The resilience of a system also represents its capacity for timely recovery in the face of an adverse event to maintain its functions [4], which refers to not only the structural resilience in the field of engineering but also the planetary resilience in terms of the relationship between human activities and the sustainable future of our planet [5]. Sustainability refers to “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” [5] (p. 24). Sustainability focuses on “people, planet, and prosperity” [6] (p. 1). Sustainability is also perceived as an approach to combat prominent societal challenges and to strive for the “environmental, societal, and economic balance for improved quality of life” [7] (p. 19).

Sustainability and resilience, two intertwined concepts, serve essential roles in future and societal changes. Although less discussed in public and education spaces, resilience is crucial in sustainable development [2,5]. Resilient designs are durable in adverse situations, which continue to function, resist damage, and recover quickly. Sustainable and resilient designs balance economic, ecological, and societal needs by being responsive to community impact, public health, and the environment. Industry, government, the public, professional associations, and accreditation organizations increasingly demand that engineers consider sustainability and resilience during the design process [8].

Appropriate understanding and knowledge of resilience and sustainability is the first step in sustainable development. Thus, there has been a growing interest among educators to implement resilience and sustainability into engineering education [9,10]. For example, the US Accreditation Board for Engineering Technology [8] requires the undergraduate engineering curriculum to directly address sustainability and expects all engineering students to be able to provide sustainable solutions to engineering design problems.

Research has shown that teaching resilience and sustainability concepts can positively impact students’ environmental behavior, critical thinking skills, knowledge and understanding, and academic performance [11]. Implementing resilience and sustainability into the engineering curriculum has important implications. First, learning about resilience and sustainability involves learning and applying innovative thinking to optimize the use of resources, in order to avoid detrimental impacts while meeting future generations’ needs [12]. Second, resilience and sustainability are an important guide and tool in considering the constraints in all engineering systems to meet the desired needs and specifications within constraints [8]. Third, learning about resilience and sustainability empowers future generations to take responsibility for sustainable development and prepares future engineers to lead sustainable policies [13,14]. Therefore, all engineering students should be taught resilience and sustainability appropriately and adequately.

The concept of resilience in the context of engineering education is in prevention. This includes reducing the adverse consequences impacting people, environment, and economy, and shortening the time for recovery when facing an adverse event [15]. The practice of resilience involves not only technical and engineering expertise but also the consideration of the social, environmental, and economic impact of the technical solution. Thus, resilience is a multidisciplinary concept. The four design principles of resilience are Robustness (strength and ability to withstand adverse events to reduce failure), Redundancy (substitutable elements of a system), Resourcefulness (the ability to identify and apply resources), and Rapidity (timely recovery). These design principles help prevent failure and reduce negative consequences and the recovery time of a system from an adverse event. Resilient infrastructure lasts and retains functional and structural capacity, supporting transportation, energy, water, and social systems after an adverse event. The design principles of resilience enhance the students’ understanding of a system’s physical and social resilience. Promoting resilience in climate-related and other disasters is essential to achieve sustainable development [5,6].

The essence of sustainability in engineering education is to achieve the balance between economic (profit), environmental (planet), and social (people) tradeoffs of an integrated system [16]. The triple bottom line principle, summarized by the three Ps—people (social well-being), planet (environmental health), and profit (economic viability)—guides sustainable decision making by integrating social, environmental, and economic dimensions. Sustainability design principles are responsive to community impact, human health, and the environment, and meet the needs of the current generation while not compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. The common core of the environment, economy, and people lies at the intersection of resilience and sustainability to achieve a balance in the socio-ecological systems of the planet [5]. Together, these two concepts serve critical roles in sustainable and resilient engineering design processes [17]. Weaving resilience and sustainability into the engineering curriculum helps students achieve a balanced understanding of all aspects of sustainable development.

Considering that engineers play a critical role in problem solving, engineering curricula must integrate sustainability and resilience concepts. Learning about sustainability and resilience and their applications is integral to preparing future engineers for unwanted disasters and to build a sustainable future for mankind, given the planetary boundary crises we are facing [5]. The significance of sustainability and resilience for addressing social challenges across disciplines necessitates the inclusion of both concepts in formal curricula [18,19]. Educational programs centered on sustainability have increased dramatically in the U.S. [20]. However, limited research has been conducted implementing both concepts simultaneously. Additionally, limited research has been conducted implementing such concepts from multiple engineering disciplines. This study aims to investigate the faculty’s perspectives and experience of integrating sustainability and resilience concepts into their respective undergraduate curriculum. This study will provide insights into implementing sustainability and resilience simultaneously into engineering from multiple disciplines.

The main contributions of this article include (1) documenting how faculties from diverse engineering disciplines integrated resilience and sustainability into existing undergraduate curricula, (2) identifying the most important aspects and applications of both concepts from the faculty perspective, and (3) analyzing challenges and instructional strategies used, thereby providing actionable insights for broader adoption.

2. Literature Review

The following subsections explore existing instructional strategies and the challenges identified in the literature when implementing resilience and sustainability in engineering curricula.

2.1. Instructional Strategies for Implementing Resilience and Sustainability

The most common approach to implementing resilience and sustainability is to integrate the concepts into an existing curriculum to avoid the disruption of existing programs [21]. This approach relies on intertwining resilience and sustainability with the existing engineering content [22]. For example, the California Polytechnic State University requires students to complete a special section on sustainable development within their electrical engineering laboratory course [21]. Another approach to implementing resilience and sustainability in engineering curricula is the development of stand-alone courses on such concepts [23]. While this approach could be successful, it was less adopted in practice because of the resources needed for such course development, in lieu of the already packed engineering curricula that leave little room for new courses. For the integration of resilience and sustainability, some implementations focus on sustainability, and others focus on resilience [24]. However, resilience is often introduced to students in the context of its contribution to sustainable development and practice [25]. Therefore, we discuss the implementations of both concepts as an integral whole in the sense that the instructional approaches and strategies for implementing resilience are appropriate for the implementations of sustainability and vice versa.

Different instructional strategies have been used to implement resilience and sustainability in various engineering curricula. In a systematic review of the literature on how sustainability was integrated into engineering curricula, Thürer and colleagues [26] identified active learning, notably project-based learning (PBL), games, simulations, and role plays, as the popular instructional strategies adopted. The review also reported “an increased awareness of sustainability issues/solutions” within the students as a result of these implementations [26] (p. 614). In addition, case studies or case-based analysis has been popular and effective for implementing sustainability in engineering curricula because it provides basic understanding and application opportunities of the concept in environmental and business settings [27]. Similarly, instructional strategies, such as inviting experts as guest speakers [28] and case studies, are popular and effective strategies for introducing the resilience concept and its principles to graduate students in environmental engineering, civil engineering, and industrial engineering [29]. However, hands-on PBL is one of the most common instructional strategies used to integrate sustainability and resilience into engineering curricula [24,30]. The PBL approach was effective for not only helping students understand these concepts but also allowing them to develop critical thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving skills [30]. The affordances of PBL, such as allowing for interdisciplinary, collaborative, and experiential learning [31], corroborate the complex and multidisciplinary characteristics of sustainability and resilience [32]. PBL also has the ability to connect students’ learning to real-life experience. However, there are limited studies on implementing resilience and sustainability concurrently within existing engineering curricula across disciplines.

2.2. Challenges in Implementing Sustainability and Resilience

Despite the importance of implementing sustainability and resilience in engineering education, challenges remain. The biggest challenge is that faculty members struggled with limited room in existing engineering curricula to incorporate resilience and sustainability principles [21]. It is well known that current engineering programs and curricula are intensive and constrained in terms of adding new content [33]. A packed curriculum can be challenging for faculty members who are interested in teaching resilience and sustainability, as they would find it difficult to fit these concepts into an already crowded curriculum [21]. The lack of flexibility within the undergraduate engineering curriculum for such implementation could result in a limited understanding of resilience and sustainability among engineering students.

Engineering faculty members have also identified two additional main challenges in teaching sustainability and resilience [34]. First, there is a shortage of resources available when it comes to implementing these concepts. This could include things such as teaching materials, case studies, or hands-on experience with sustainable engineering practices. Second, faculty members lack the knowledge or understanding of sustainability and resilience concepts. This lack of knowledge could result from inadequate training or professional development opportunities for the faculty to keep up with the latest trends and developments in sustainable engineering practices. These challenges make it difficult for faculty members to effectively teach sustainability and resilience concepts, which could hinder the development of sustainable engineering practices in the industry. Addressing these challenges would require efforts from institutions to provide more resources and training opportunities to faculty members so that they can effectively incorporate sustainability and resilience concepts into their engineering courses.

Another challenge faced in teaching sustainability and resilience in engineering curricula is the lack of emphasis on building contextual connections between these concepts and professional practice, thus leaving faculty members with no practical examples. According to Guerra [30], the implementation of sustainability and resilience in engineering curricula is hindered by the failure to promote connections that would enable students to relate sustainability and resilience concepts to their future professional practice. Without contextual connections, students may struggle to understand the practical implications of sustainability and resilience design principles in the real world. This could result in a limited understanding of these concepts and hinder the development of sustainable engineering practices in the industry. To overcome this challenge, there is a need to incorporate case studies and practical applications of sustainability and resilience concepts in engineering courses. Additionally, there could be more emphasis on experiential learning opportunities, such as internships, which provide students with real-world experience in sustainable engineering practices.

Furthermore, the incorporation of resilience and sustainability into engineering curricula is often not comprehensive enough to provide engineering students with a thorough understanding of the concepts and principles. This lack of understanding would hinder students’ ability to apply such concepts to future engineering practice [26]. Although some students may have the knowledge of resilience and sustainability, they lack the motivation to apply them if such concepts are not emphasized throughout the engineering curriculum [33]. Instructors are therefore encouraged to collaborate with experts to allow engineering students to interact with industry experts and gain a better understanding of these concepts, which also motivates students to incorporate those principles into future engineering practice.

Engineering faculties play a critical role in teaching resilience and sustainability concepts. Although there is research on how to implement sustainability or resilience in undergraduate engineering curricula, few studies have investigated the faculty’s perspective when implementing both concepts simultaneously. There have been no known studies that investigated faculty’s perspectives on such implementation involving multiple engineering disciplines. Therefore, this study seeks to develop an understanding of the faculty’s implementation of sustainability and resilience across various engineering disciplines, which will provide unique insight into integrating such concepts and design principles into engineering curricula.

3. Context of the Study and Theoretical Framework

This study is part of a larger externally funded project on integrating sustainability and resiliency concepts into undergraduate engineering curricula at a northwest metropolitan university. The long-term goal of the project is to help transform undergraduate engineering education by instilling sustainability and resiliency and their design principles in electrical, materials science, mechanical, biomedical, and civil engineering, as well as construction management curricula.

Even within the field of engineering, resilience and sustainability are multidisciplinary and multi-semantic concepts. In this study, we adopted the Socio-ecological Systems (SES) perspective, proposed by Rockström and colleagues [5,35] as the theoretical framework to help understand the complex nature of both concepts in engineering. The SES framework is a comprehensive approach to understanding and managing the complex interactions between human societies and ecological systems. It takes the planetary approach and emphasizes the interdependence of social and ecological systems and seeks to integrate insights from multiple disciplines to address sustainability challenges our planet faces.

In general, most researchers would agree that resilience and sustainability consist of social, economic, and environmental dimensions [26]. The recent updated planetary boundaries framework, which depicts how human activities have impacted each of the nine boundaries of our planet’s climate and ecosystems with potential irreversible consequences, further highlights the relationship between sustainability and planetary resilience [5]. Planetary resilience is a concept that reflects the Earth system’s ability to absorb environmental shocks caused by human activity while maintaining a stable, life-supporting state. The SES framework integrates resilience and sustainability and is consistent with our perspective of both concepts in the field of engineering. Thus, the SES framework is appropriate for this study. In the context of this study, resilience and sustainability refer not only to structural aspects (e.g., the design of engineering systems) [15,16] but also to planetary resilience (e.g., the environmental and social impacts of structural design and engineering systems) [5].

Our larger funded project aims to improve engineering students’ ability to create sustainable and resilient engineering designs. The current study focuses on the faculty members’ experience and perspectives regarding their implementation of both concepts after they had embedded sustainability and resiliency concepts and design principles in their course as part of their participation in the funded project.

The research team provided a stand-alone template module on sustainability and resilience and their design principles in engineering, and shared it with the faculty members in the college of engineering. The template module focuses on the definitions as well as some applications of both concepts in engineering. Faculty members using the template had freedom and flexibility in how and when to implement such concepts into their own curriculum. The research team also provided consulting for each faculty in adapting the stand-alone module into one of the courses they chose as needed. At the end of the semester, when the faculty had implemented both sustainability and resilience in one of their courses, the research team conducted a one-to-one interview with the faculty members regarding their knowledge and experience. The research questions guiding this study are as follows:

• How have engineering faculty members integrated sustainability and resilience in their course/curriculum in terms of instructional strategies?
• What is the most important aspect of sustainability and resilience and their applications for students?
• What are the challenges and issues for engineering faculties while implementing sustainability and resilience as part of their curriculum?

4. Method

We utilized a qualitative study comprising one-on-one interviews [36] in order to gain in-depth understanding of the faculty members’ experience and knowledge regarding their implementation of both sustainability and resilience in an undergraduate course. The interviews were semi-structured, providing a balance between guided questions and open-ended responses. This approach allowed us to explore specific themes to answer research questions while adapting to the conversation flow [37]. The interviews were also able to collect detailed and in-depth data while helping build rapport with participants, leading to more honest and comprehensive insights.

The participating faculty members had adapted the sustainability and resilience template module into their course and taught it themselves. A qualitative study allows us to collect rich data of the faculty members’ detailed descriptions of their experience and perspectives regarding the critical aspects of sustainability and resiliency in the faculty’s disciplines, and the challenges and implications of both concepts in their curriculum [36]. This approach provides researchers an opportunity to gain a deep understanding of the studied phenomenon by examining multiple perspectives and contextual factors. It is particularly useful for facilitating an exploration of processes, relationships, and experiences that may not be captured through quantitative methods. Therefore, a qualitative approach can provide valuable insights to help us understand the challenges regarding implementing sustainability and resilience into undergraduate engineering curricula from multiple disciplinary perspectives.

4.1. Participants

The research team invited all (over ten) faculty members from the College of Engineering who had been involved in the project to participate in interviews about their experiences implementing resilience and sustainability in their courses. We aimed to recruit at least one faculty member from each department. Eight faculty members from four engineering disciplines/departments, including material science and engineering, mechanical and biomedical engineering, construction management, and civil engineering, volunteered to participate in this study.

Table 1. Participants’ background.

Participants (Pseudonym)	Gender	Professional Ranking	Discipline	Industry Experience	Years of Teaching
Andrew	M	Associate Professor	CM	Yes	8
Tristan	M	Clinical Assistant Professor	CM	Yes	3+
Winston	M	Professor	CM	Yes	25+
Henry	M	Associate Professor	MBE	Yes	20+
Jennifer	F	Graduate Teaching Assistant	MBE	No	1–2
Lucia	F	Lecturer	MBE	Yes	3+
Joshua	M	Associate Professor	CE	Yes	20+
Nina	F	Professor	MSE	Yes	20

Note: Construction Management (CM); Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering (MBE) Civil Engineering (CE); Materials Science and Engineering (MSE).

displays the demographic background of each participant (pseudonym). Five participants were male and three were female. The participants consisted of various levels of professional ranking from being a graduate teaching assistant to full professors. All faculty participants except for the graduate teaching assistant had industrial experience prior to their academic career. Although the graduate teaching assistant had no formal industrial experience, she had various research experiences both as a graduate and undergraduate researcher in materials science and engineering. Prior to being interviewed, the graduate teaching assistant had also just completed an international trip to set up the microgrid systems in a developing country sponsored by the GREEN Program, which focuses on educating and empowering future sustainability leaders through experiential education [38]. The graduate assistant had prior teaching experience as well as experience in applying sustainability and resilience design principles in solving real-world problems. Thus, we grouped the teaching assistant into the faculty category because she had the potential to provide equally rich experiences regarding the research questions.

The participants’ years of teaching experience also had a big range, from fewer than 2 years to more than 20 years. Four participants had 20 or more than 20 years of teaching experience, and three participants had more than 3 to 10 years of teaching experience. One instructor had less than two years of teaching experience. Informed consent to participate and consent to publish were obtained from all participants.

4.2. Data Collection and Analysis

One-on-one semi-structured interviews for about 35 to 60 minutes with each participant were conducted via Zoom. The length of the interviews depended on the participants’ experiences with the sustainability and resiliency concepts and their willingness and ability to share those experiences either related to practice in the engineering field or teaching. The following semi-structured questions on the integration of sustainability and resilience, the applications of sustainability and resilience, and the challenges and issues of implementing sustainability and resilience as part of their curricula guided the interviews.

• How have you integrated the sustainability and resilience concepts in your course/curriculum as part of your involvement in this project? Could you provide one or two examples?
• What is the most important aspect of the sustainability and resilience concepts or their applications in your discipline that the students need to learn in your course(s)?
• Did you have some challenges and issues while implementing sustainability and resilience as part of your curriculum? If so, please elaborate.

The interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed by a three-person research team consisting of a professor, a postdoctoral fellow, and a graduate research assistant. We employed Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis approach to “identify, analyze, and report patterns (themes) within” qualitative data [39] (p. 82). This method enabled us to explore recurring ideas that reflected participants’ experiences and perspectives related to implementing resilience and sustainability in their courses.

The coding process began with all three researchers independently reading and rereading the interview transcripts to become deeply familiar with the data. From this familiarization phase, the team collaboratively developed an initial coding framework (see Appendix A). This preliminary codebook was primarily informed by the interview protocol but remained open to new codes that emerged organically from the data. The codes reflected recurring concepts and ideas that captured something significant in relation to the research questions [39].

To apply the initial coding framework, the postdoctoral fellow and the graduate research assistant independently coded each transcript. Each theme was operationalized such that if a faculty member’s response reflected that theme, it was scored as “1”; if not, it was scored as “0.” Importantly, within each thematic category, a participant’s response was counted only once per interview, regardless of how many times the theme occurred in their narrative.

An initial round of inter-rater reliability was conducted using Cohen’s Kappa on the coded responses from four of the eight interviews (N = 120 coded instances), yielding a kappa coefficient of 0.69, indicating substantial agreement between the two raters [40]. The raters then met to discuss areas of discrepancy, working collaboratively to clarify code definitions and refine inclusion criteria for ambiguous responses. After this consensus meeting, both raters independently re-coded the data using the revised coding scheme (see Appendix B), resulting in an improved Cohen’s Kappa of 0.84. This level of agreement falls within the “almost perfect” range (0.81 to 1.00) as defined by Landis and Koch [40].

Once reliability was established, frequency analysis was conducted to examine how often each theme appeared across the interviews. Again, each theme was counted only once per participant to avoid inflating frequencies. This systematic and collaborative approach ensured that the thematic coding was both rigorous and trustworthy.

5. Results

Our research questions focus on the following:

• How faculty members incorporated sustainability and resilience into their courses through instructional strategies;
• The most important aspects of these concepts and their applications for student learning;
• The challenges and issues faculty members encountered when implementing both concepts in their courses.

The following section presents the results related to these research questions. The results are organized into key themes derived from the faculty interviews. The following subsections detail the instructional strategies used, the most important aspects and applications of resilience and sustainability identified by the faculty members, and the challenges they encountered.

5.1. Instructional Strategies for Implementing Sustainability and Resilience

The participating faculty members implemented sustainability and resilience by integrating the concepts into existing content in one of the courses they chose in their respective discipline. Faculty members taught sustainability and resilience in their course either as lectures ranging from at least two class periods to a few weeks or an individual module devoted to both concepts and their principles consisting of several lectures. Half of the participants had modules and half of the participants had lectures centered on sustainability and resilience in their course. For example, one faculty member in civil engineering had one module (four class periods) out of eight modules in his course devoted to sustainability and resilience.

A variety of instructional strategies, such as discussion of the concepts, applying the principles of the concepts or project-based learning, and inviting experts in the field as guest speakers, were used to introduce sustainability and resilience. General discussion was the most common instructional strategy used by the faculty members. Applying the design principles of sustainability and resilience, as well as inviting guest speakers, were the second most adopted instructional strategies. Other instructional strategies, such as analyzing the need for sustainability and resilience principles in solving environmental and societal issues and assigning reading on such concepts with accompanying homework assignments, were also used by the faculty members. Using online tools and relevant examples to introduce and illustrate the concepts of resilience and sustainability, watching videos, and quizzing students on resilience and sustainability were also used, although to a lesser degree.

Table 2. Instructional strategies used.

Instructional Strategies	Tristan (CM)	Andrew (CM)	Winston (CM)	Lucia (MBE)	Henry (MBE)	Jennifer (MBE)	Joshua (CE)	Nina (MSE)
General discussions	X	X			X			X
Applying principles/ project-based approach	X		X	X
Guest Speaker				X	X	X
Analyzing the application needs	X			X
Reading and homework assignments	X						X
Online tools for introduction						X
Quizzes	X
Using examples for illustration		X
Watching videos and assignments				X

Note: X indicates the participant’s employment of the instructional strategy.

shows the adopted instructional strategies for teaching sustainability and resilience by each faculty member from different disciplines.

Specifically, four faculty members employed a discussion-based approach to spark conversations on sustainability and resilience (Table 2). For example, Nina from the Materials Science and Engineering department used discussion as a way of assessing students’ understanding of the lecture encompassing the sustainability and resilience concepts. In the lectures on polymers and plastics, Nina used the discussion-based approach to engage students in talking about what happens to plastic waste in the life cycle of an engineering product. In construction management, Winston adopted the discussion-based approach to introduce the sustainability concept and invite students to share thoughts on what sustainability means to students as engineers and what it means for design.

Three faculty members invited industry professionals to their classes to discuss the concepts of sustainability and resilience. The guest speaker approach helped bridge students with the professional field. Jennifer revealed that this approach helped students to get more involved than in a traditional lecture. In addition, Lucia from the Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering department shared that students were able to learn about how industry professionals utilized sustainability and resilience design principles in their field.

Three faculty members utilized project-based learning that focused on applying principles/applications of sustainability and resilience in industry. For instance, Tristan from the Construction Management department engaged students in waste management planning, where students were tasked to develop a site logistics plan. Tristan elaborated that the intent of the project was to demonstrate what the field needs and what students have to do. Lucia from the Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering department encouraged students to participate in a design process using CAD. To incorporate the concept of resilience, Lucia motivated students to build the project with resiliency and redundancy in mind. The project challenges the students to predict risk; sustainability is integrated as part of design consideration.

Other instructional strategies included quizzes, reading and relative homework assignments, using examples to illustrate the concepts, using online tools to introduce the concepts, and videos and assignments. Tristan implemented quizzes to check students’ understanding of the concepts. Joshua from the Civil Engineering department used reading and homework assignments to assess students’ understanding of the concepts. Winston from Construction Management used a solar panel example to introduce the concept of sustainability. Lucia from Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering used videos and assignments to walk students through the concepts of sustainability and resilience and their design principles. Jennifer from Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering adopted online tools such as a virtual tour to introduce the concept of sustainability; Jennifer incorporated videos of solar panels and hydropower to teach resilience.

From the disciplinary perspectives, three participating faculty members in the MBE used multiple instructional strategies to introduce the concepts (Table 2). However, when looking closely at the results from the point of professional ranks of the faculty, it seems that non-tenure track faculty members (e.g., clinical, lecture, and graduate instructors) tended to use more and various instructional strategies in their teaching. For example, Tristan, a clinical assistant professor, used five different instructional strategies. Lucia, a lecturer, and Jennifer, a graduate teaching assistant, both used three different instructional strategies in teaching sustainability and resilience.

5.2. Most Important Aspect of Resilience and Sustainability

Across disciplines, faculty members consider practicality, the triple bottom line principle, and liability and environmental issues to be the most important aspects of sustainability for their students to learn and practice. Similarly, faculty members consider resiliency and rapidity or time recovery to be the most important aspects of resilience for students.

Table 3. The most important aspect of resilience (R) and sustainability (S).

	Most Important of S (Practicality)	Most Important of S (Triple Bottom Line)	Most Important of S (Liability and Environmental Issues)	Most Important Aspect of R (Rapidity-Time Recovery)	Most Important Aspect of R (Resiliency)
Andrew (CM)		X
Tristan (CM)	X		X
Winston (CM)	X
Lucia (MBE)		X			X
Henry (MBE)	X	X
Jennifer (MBE)	X
Joshua (CE)				X
Nina (MSE)	X

Note: X indicates the participant’s most important aspect of R and S.

presents the most important aspect of resilience and sustainability from the faculty members’ perspectives.

Five faculty members shared that practicality is the most important aspect of sustainability. Nina from Materials Science and Engineering emphasized the importance of considering the constraints in the design process in terms of sustainability. Henry and Jennifer from Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering highlighted the importance of having knowledge of sustainability and directly transferring that knowledge to engineering design. Winston also stressed the importance of applying sustainability in construction management.

Three faculty members shared another important aspect of sustainability, which is the triple bottom line element as a whole. For instance, Lucia from Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering emphasized that sustainability: “is not just environmental… there are three pieces of it… environment, people and profit… they are all important.” Andrew from Construction Management added that for a system to be sustainable, “it needs to be just more than helping the planet; it’s got to make sense to help benefit society, having some economic benefit for the organization.”

Tristan from Construction Management relayed that liability and environmental issues are an important aspect of sustainability for his students. Tristan also pointed out the awareness of environmental issues in engineering design and the role of organizational liability as an important aspect of R and S for his students. He detailed the following:

“[for] construction management students, I think SWPPP [stormwater pollution prevention plan] is probably the biggest one for most of these students [in construction management], it’s going to be on almost every project they work on. … so helping them understand that one [SWPPP] because they need to do it right to protect the company from liability and there’s a whole lot involved with that, so they need to do it right, because it also protects the environment.”

Lucia from Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering recognized that resiliency is prominent in mechanical engineering, and her module focused on making sure that the concept was taken as seriously as possible. Lucia explained the following:

“The whole concept of resiliency is huge in our mechanical engineering, like they [engineers] need to think through, they need to try to think through as many things as they can to make it [the product] as resilient as they can, [which is] super important so that the whole module is important [to make sure R and S are treated as they should be in the curriculum].”

Joshua from Civil Engineering pointed out that damage to any engineering system is likely to happen sometimes, and the systems need to be easily repaired, and systems need to be able to be brought back functioning relatively quickly. This concept is congruent with one of the resilience principles, rapidity, in terms of time for recovery.

5.3. Most Important Applications of Resilience and Sustainability

Only three participating faculty members shared in their interview regarding the most important applications of resilience and sustainability for their students.

Table 4. Most important applications of resilience and sustainability.

	Renewable Energy Sources and Building Design	Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan (SWPPP)	Waste Management	Solar Power
Tristan (CM)		X	X
Winston (CM)	X
Lucia (MBE)				X

Note: X indicates the participant’s most important application of R and S.

presents the most important applications of resilience and sustainability from the faculty members’ perspectives.

Tristan from Construction Management shared that swamp and stormwater pollution prevention is an important sustainable application for structure management students. In addition, he pointed out the importance of waste management planning, which is about recycling, reducing, reusing, and repurposing. Winston from Construction Management considered that renewable energy sources and building design are important sustainable applications that lead to healthier and sustainable buildings for occupants, which emphasizes the application of sustainability related to the energy aspects of a building. Lucia from Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering revealed that solar power is an important sustainable application, which not only focuses on the environment but also the application of the triple bottom line principle of sustainability.

5.4. Challenges in Implementing Resilience and Sustainability

Various challenges in implementing resilience and sustainability in engineering curricula were revealed among the participating faculties. Time constraints on the faculty’s side for implementing such concepts was the major challenge. Packed curricula, students’ lack of motivation to learn about the concepts, struggles in finding the right strategy, and the difficulty of teaching such concepts in introductory courses are also identified as major challenges.

Table 5. Challenges in the implementation.

	Tristan (CM)	Andrew (CM)	Winston (CM)	Lucia (MBE)	Henry (MBE)	Jennifer (MBE)	Joshua (CE)	Nina (MSE)
Time constraint			X		X	X		X
Introducing concepts in introductory courses						X	X
Packed curriculum			X
Lack student motivation	X				X	X
Choose appropriate strategy			X	X
Lack applications of R for instructors						X
Connect concepts to industry and applications	X
Create application- based assignments		X

Note: X indicates the participant’s challenges in implementing R and S.

presents the challenges in implementing resilience and sustainability from the faculty members’ perspectives.

Four faculty members from three engineering disciplines expressed that time constraint is a challenging factor in implementing resilience and sustainability into the curriculum. Henry from Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering stated that faculty has always faced the dilemma of how much time one has for various things in the classroom. Henry said, “There’s always the challenge, I think you know you’re always faced with how much time you can and have devoted to various things in the classroom.” Jennifer from Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering also found there was limited time for teaching topics on resilience and sustainability. Jennifer echoed, “With only an hour and 15 minutes each class period you don’t have that much time to tell them everything [about R and S]. I think that’s the most challenging part.” Nina from Materials Science and Engineering revealed that the pandemic has made it even more difficult to find the right time to integrate resilience and sustainability in her course among all the other things. Nina expressed the following:

“… just time, the right time to do something well and something is you know it’s hard to find that time and it’s been really hard to find that time in the last two years. …it takes time to do a good job of teaching ….”

Winston from Construction Management relayed that in a full curriculum, instructors need to make time specifically to integrate resilience and sustainability throughout the curriculum. Winston stressed, “… other than just fit it into a course… if you’ve already got a curriculum stuffed full, you either have to make time for it specifically or in it….”

Two faculty members shared that finding the right instructional strategy to introduce the resilience and sustainability concepts was challenging. Lucia from Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering stressed that she struggled with how to present the concepts to her students. She shared the following:

“So here’s how to present it… does that make sense? … Here’s an assignment that I’d like to give… to verify that they’re [students] catching on … and they’re learning the material they’re supposed to…, does it look like it [instructional strategy] fits my class?”

Winston from Construction Management echoed Lucia and concurred that it was challenging to find the balance in delivering the content on resilience and sustainability appropriately and from an instructional approach without confusing students. Winston emphasized, “… you can confuse them [students] and go right over their head really fast, if you don’t balance that [strategy and content], so I think that would be the biggest challenge.”

Two faculty members have pointed out that a packed curriculum was another challenge for implementing the resilience and sustainability concepts. It was always an issue to add something new to a full curriculum that leaves little-to-no space for new content. Two faculty members also shared that introducing resilience and sustainability concepts in introductory courses was challenging. For example, Jennifer from Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering explained that in lower-level engineering courses, students have not undertaken any engineering projects and lack the knowledge and experience, which makes it difficult for faculty members to teach resilience and sustainability in introductory courses. Jennifer elaborated, “… it’s just a lot harder to teach students about resilience especially like in the freshman and sophomore years–the lower level courses… because, like, they have never really done any engineering.” In addition, students in introductory courses lack the necessary background knowledge for learning about resilience and sustainability concepts, which also contributes to the challenge of introducing such concepts in those courses. Moreover, Joshua from Civil Engineering stated that the content was usually generally involving numerical calculations in introductory courses and asking students to learn about resilience and sustainability in those courses was challenging.

Two faculty members also pointed out that some engineering students were not motivated to learn the non-technical and non-mathematical concepts of resilience and sustainability. For example, Jennifer in Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering mentioned that it was challenging to motivate students in learning about resilience and sustainability if they were not interested. Jennifer further added that “… They weren’t really interested in it … I had to get in there and be like…, trying to make sure students are actually engaged…. I would put them into groups and like wanting them to talk about it. …” At the same time, if the students have never heard of the concept of resilience, the faculty had to spend extra time in order to figure out what should be taught regarding those concepts.

Other challenges include the lack of applications of resilience for instructors, difficulty in creating application-based assignments, and connecting the resilience and sustainability concepts to real-world applications and industry. For instance, Jennifer expressed the need for applications of resilience that the faculty could use when explaining the concept in the design process of a product. Similarly, Andrew from Construction Management shared that adapting practices and sustainability research into application-based assignments for students was challenging. Tristan from Construction Management also shared that connecting the sustainability concept with industry practice and real-word applications was difficult.

Although there were challenges, the implementation of sustainability and resilience into the undergraduate engineering curriculum was successful. According to the pre- and post-survey completed by 302 students in the courses embedded with both sustainability and resilience, students’ knowledge of sustainability concept has been significantly improved after they received the course instruction (p < 0.001). Similarly, students’ attitude towards sustainability has been significantly improved after the course instruction (p = 0.03). Student’s knowledge of resilience has also been improved, although there was no significant difference detected between the pre- and post-survey scores (p = 0.062).

6. Discussion

Our study highlighted the importance of documenting specific instructional strategies across various engineering disciplines. Engineering faculty members emphasized the need to identify effective instructional strategies, develop practical examples of resilience and sustainability, and connect these concepts to real-world applications. The participating faculty members used various instructional strategies to integrate resilience and sustainability into their course, despite two members voicing struggles in finding the right strategy (Table 2). General discussions, applications and PBL approaches, and guest speakers were the most popular instructional strategies adopted across the engineering disciplines. Instructional strategies, such as hands-on, PBL that connects resilience and sustainability with real-world applications and industry practice, is especially important [29,30]. These findings are particularly relevant for curriculum developers and other key stakeholders. This is because most faculty members do not have the time needed to create examples and applications on their own (Table 5). Additionally, some faculty members may lack the knowledge to teach resilience and sustainability [11], highlighting the need for relevant professional development and resources. Therefore, departments and colleges should provide support for faculties including providing appropriate resources as well as incentives for implementing sustainability and resiliency in courses. It is worth noting that incentives are especially needed to encourage tenured and tenure-track faculty members in adopting various instructional strategies in integrating resilience and sustainability in their course.

Our findings underscore key implications for curriculum developers and other stakeholders in engineering education. Faculty members identified practicality, the triple bottom line principle, and liability and environmental issues as the most important aspects of sustainability for students (Table 3). Similarly, they emphasized resiliency and rapidity—or time to recovery—as the most critical components of resilience. These insights align with the Social-ecological Systems (SES) framework, which addresses pressing challenges of the Anthropocene era, including breaches of planetary boundaries such as biodiversity loss and its consequences for human and ecological systems [5]. These findings highlight the essential role of sustainability and resilience in preparing engineering students to contribute to sustainable development and planetary resilience [23,26]. To support this goal, curriculum developers should design instructional materials, case studies, and real-world examples that are grounded in the SES framework. This approach will help ensure that the integration of sustainability and resilience into engineering education reflects their broader significance and prepares students to address complex global challenges.

This study identified several challenges in implementing resilience and sustainability within engineering curricula, including time constraints, overcrowded course content, limited student motivation, and the difficulty of teaching these concepts in introductory courses. These barriers are common when integrating new interdisciplinary themes into established programs [34]. The current study addresses these challenges by providing template modules and consulting support for faculty members to help them adapt resilience and sustainability into their courses. For curriculum developers and stakeholders, this underscores the need for strategic integration. To address time and content constraints, it is essential to prioritize the most critical aspects of resilience and sustainability (as outlined in Table 3) and focus instruction on those elements. This targeted approach can make implementation more feasible for both faculty and students. Leveraging existing curriculum resources can also reduce faculty preparation time and support more efficient integration.

To enhance student engagement, collaboration with industry partners can provide real-world project opportunities that demonstrate the relevance of resilience and sustainability in professional practice. Incorporating hands-on, applied assignments further reinforces learning and fosters motivation by connecting abstract concepts to tangible outcomes [41]. These strategies collectively inform how curriculum developers and academic leaders can more effectively embed sustainability and resilience into engineering education.

Various challenges in implementing resilience and sustainability in engineering curricula were revealed including time constraints, packed curricula, students’ lack of motivation to learn about the concepts, and the difficulty of teaching such concepts in introductory courses. Time constraints, packed curricula, and lack of students’ motivation are expected when implementing resilience and sustainability in existing engineering curricula [34]. For time constraints and packed curricula, identifying the most important aspects related to resilience and sustainability (Table 3), and focusing on those aspects during the implementation, would make it more manageable for both students and instructors. In addition, using available resources would help save instructors’ time in preparation. For the lack of student motivation, collaborating with industry partners to provide students with opportunities to work on real-world projects and providing students with hands-on experience with resilience and sustainability by incorporating practical assignments [41] will help students see the relevance of their learning and increase their motivation.

A key finding with significant implications for curriculum developers and stakeholders is the challenge faculties face when introducing resilience and sustainability concepts in introductory engineering courses. Although these courses do not require technical or mathematical prerequisites, students often lack the contextual knowledge needed to fully grasp real-world applications of these concepts. This highlights the importance of designing curricula that integrate practical, real-world examples of resilience and sustainability early in students’ academic journeys. To foster social and environmental awareness among future engineers, it is essential to allocate more resources and support toward embedding these concepts throughout the engineering curriculum—beginning at the foundational level [5,23].

7. Conclusions

This study investigates the instructional strategies faculties adopted to integrate resilience and sustainability into undergraduate engineering curricula. Specifically, it explores the most important aspects and applications of these concepts for students, as well as the challenges faculty members faced during implementation. Faculty members employed strategies such as discussions, project-based learning (PBL), and guest speakers to incorporate sustainability and resilience into their courses. We qualitatively assessed their experiences and the challenges encountered during this process.

The results indicate that integrating resilience and sustainability through these strategies improved student learning outcomes and attitudes toward the topics. This study also provides insights into how to better support faculty in implementing these concepts—particularly through the use of appropriate instructional strategies. Notably, student learning and attitudes improved when faculty used a structured module template and a combination of approaches, including discussions, PBL, and guest speakers.

However, this study also highlights key barriers to implementation, including time constraints, overloaded curricula, lack of student motivation, and the difficulty of introducing these abstract concepts—especially in introductory courses. These findings underscore the importance of providing faculty with adequate support, training, and incentives to enable effective curriculum adoption.

Limitations and Future Research

This study has some limitations. First, due to the qualitative nature of the research, the small sample size and the fact that the faculty members who volunteered to be interviewed limit the generalizability of the results. Second, the faculty members who participated in this study were more likely to be enthusiastic about integrating resilience and sustainability into their course and voice their opinions, which could further limit the generalizability of the findings. Third, the definitions of sustainability and resilience in this study are oriented toward engineering disciplines. Thus the findings may not be readily transferable to other disciplines outside of engineering.

Nevertheless, we believe that the knowledge and understanding gained from this study can be the foundation for future similar research. A future study on faculty’s instructional approaches for implementing these concepts could investigate the correlation between teaching experience and the strategies employed. Furthermore, it may explore how professional ranks and disciplines could impact the choice of instructional strategies by faculty members. Lastly, more research on how to introduce resilience and sustainability to freshmen and first-year engineering students and the implementation of such concepts in introductory courses are needed.