Engineering science has to undergo massive structural changes due to the radical technological developments over the last decades. New strategies for research, education and practice are needed to deal with many challenges posed to the engineering community.
These challenges are partly caused by industrial and economic constraints resulting in catastrophic environmental pollution in many regions. In addition, engineers have to take into account the ever-increasing complexity of interaction between the technology and human beings. In the techno-centric 21th century era engineers are challenged by the uncertainties associated with the impacts of their designs on their respective societies. Although the need for reform has been vaguely identified, there is a dissent between relevant actors on the intensity and targets of the needed changes. Technical universities have started integrating implicitly and explicitly values and principles of sustainable development. The concept of sustainability is therefore gradually shaping the technical knowledge and working habits of the next generation engineers and it influences future technology development and use.
This book presents analysis of different views of engineers about the necessary changes in research, education and the organization of technical universities. This empirical analysis is combined with results of debates on the sustainable university, developed over the last decade, in order to generate recommendations for the path of technical universities toward sustainable universities.
06/2008 - 02/2010