A multi-disciplinary approach to introducing environmental-sustainability concepts into a civil engineering course

Over the last decade, debate around our ablity to design and live in a sustainable society has been growing more vigorous. Climate change, embodied energy, embodied water and global restraint on greenhouse gas emissions will mean that existing corporations, institutions, industries and businesses will undergo fundamental change and that the fresh engineering graduate will be employed in a rapidly adjusting workforce. Accordingly, a responsive University must adjust its courses to prepare their graduates. However, issues concerned with sustainability are not confined to any one or two disciplines, and they usually cut across two or more Faculties, a phenomenon that often proves difficult for Universities to contend with. Engineering courses are a natural nexus for issues involving science, business and society viewpoints, and are on the frontline of the cross- disciplinary issues. The typical response has been to design courses incorporating a suitable balance of science and business subjects, often with little direct links between them. In this paper, we discuss the ongoing development of the Civil engineering course at La Trobe University to encompass an increasingly inter-disciplinary outlook on sustainability.