Sustainable development integration in Greek schools of engineering: current situation, experiences and actions

Abstract

In this paper, a comprehensive study regarding the assessment of sustainable development (SD) integration in Greek schools of engineering is presented. More specifically, the undergraduate and graduate curricula and websites of all schools of engineering in Greece were examined to identify SD-related content and actions. Moreover, a simple guide for embedding SD into engineering schools was established, based on the experiences of successful implementation and strategies from highly recognised technical universities worldwide, to benchmark the Greek experience and to propose indicative measures for incorporating SD teaching in Greek universities. Results indicated that changing the curriculum is not the only way to efficiently incorporate SD in universities, whereas there are gaps concerning the integration of sustainability principles and tools in Greek engineering universities. Furthermore, the initial steps of incorporating SD-related actions at an engineering department are presented and analysed indicating some characteristic key factors affecting the efficient incorporation of SD tools in engineering courses.

Keywords:

• education
• universities
• sustainability incorporation
• survey
• industrial ecology