Abstract:

Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) is a field of engineering where professionals are specifically trained to improve processes and systems through the elimination of waste and using a continuous improvement approach.

The IEM undergraduate program at the University of Aveiro was created more than 35 years ago, and has strived to offer an education that provides the students with a strong set of hard skills while also developing their transferable skills and their awareness to current issues that affect all of us and will impact their future professional lives.

In the first semester of their first year the students have an introductory course to IEM that explains the history of IEM, the main areas of IEM, the role of an IEM professional and how they can contribute to a more sustainable future.

With this in mind, one of the assignments the students have to develop during the course is specifically directed at the topic of sustainability, more particularly the connection between IEM and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

As a way to involve the students with this topic, the assignment uses a Challenge Based Learning approach, which falls within the methodologies of active teaching and learning. It comprises identifying, analysing, and designing solutions to Science, Technology, and Society problems, which provides students with an interdisciplinary learning experience, incorporating diverse perspectives from partners and aiming to collaboratively find environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable solutions.

The ‘Big Idea’ is the same for all the groups and is expressed as ‘IEM and SDG’, and the ‘Essential Question’ is defined as: ‘How can IEM contribute to the SDG?’

The groups, composed of 4 or 5 members, then select one or two of the SDG, and their challenge is to, using and A2 sized poster, highlight the role of IEM in society and the contribution it can make to achieve the selected SDG. They can, and should, resort to a network of partners like IEM professionals, sustainability experts, among others, to help them build their arguments and their work.

In this paper the result of the work presented in two academic semesters, by the students, is showed and summarized, emphasizing the perspective of the students and how they perceive that IEM can contribute to sustainability as a whole, as well as to each specific SDG.

It is very interesting to note that, although, in many cases, students are unable to implement the solutions they find for the Essential Question, they often resort to their own experiences, cases from companies they visit or online examples to illustrate their point of view.

Finally, it is believed that the way students are addressing this topic, and the challenge that they have to solve, contributes to the education of more aware citizens and, consequently, future IEM professionals.

Keywords:

Sustainable Development Goals, Industrial Engineering, Challenge Based Learning.