Intensive Environmental Sustainability Education: Long-Term Impacts on Workplace Behavior
Publication: Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice
Volume 137, Issue 2
Abstract
The University of Nebraska Partners in Pollution Prevention (P3) program has provided a results-oriented intensive sustainability course since 1997. This course focuses on providing students with application tools to promote environmental sustainability, including a service learning internship component directly on site at businesses. A survey was used to evaluate the long-term impact of this intensive sustainability course on subsequent workplace behavior of past student interns. Comparison of former interns with a control group found that interns reported they were more likely to apply source reduction principles in their workplace and more able to quantify the impact of implementation. A strong personal environmental ethic was an important predictor of reporting success in applying source reduction. Those past students with the intensive sustainability course and a self-reported strong environmental ethic were significantly more likely to report successful implementation of source reduction, even though both interns and the control group considered pollution-prevention concepts at similar rates. These data suggest that exposure to an intensive sustainability course can have a positive long-term impact on workplace behavior.
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Acknowledgments
The writers acknowledge the support of the many partners in this project, including U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyUSEPA, Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality, UNL Extension, and the UNL College of Engineering. The opinions expressed are solely the responsibility of the writers and do not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice
Volume 137 • Issue 2 • April 2011
Pages: 113 - 120
Copyright
© 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 15, 2010
Accepted: Sep 14, 2010
Published online: Sep 16, 2010
Published in print: Apr 1, 2011
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