Integrating Community Engagement and Service Learning into Environmental Engineering Curricula

Engineering education is evolving to train students to work more closely with communities to support holistic sustainability. This has increasingly involved collaborative and participatory research models that address environmental justice challenges within local communities. This research evaluates student learning experiences and changes in perceptions about race, justice, and community in a pair of undergraduate service learning courses in environmental engineering and environmental anthropology that were developed to center environmental justice through service learning. Pre- and post-class attitudinal surveys were administered to 55 students across two courses in environmental engineering and environmental anthropology and then analyzed using content analysis to identify shifts in students’ knowledge and perceptions about community engagement and environmental justice. Before their participation in the classes, many students in the environmental engineering course understood environmental injustice as harm done to the environment. At the conclusion of the semester, their understandings were broadened to include social and infrastructural injustices in communities. For the anthropology course, students had a general working knowledge of environmental justice before participating in the course, but their understanding was expanded to include a more interconnected perspective that included infrastructural systems. In both classes, student learning outcomes enhanced the value of partnering with communities and learning from community members’ lived experiences. By approaching engineering from the perspective of environmental justice, students developed broader and more holistic perspectives about the roles and values of community-based research. Students also gained greater understanding of the complex interplay between race and environment, especially when it comes to infrastructural challenges.