From Classroom to Community: Building Sustainability Competencies Through Service Learning in the Public Sector

Service-learning is a form of experiential education that allows students to deepen their understanding of concepts and theories within a real-world setting. Moreover, spurred by the United Nations 2030 Framework, major engineering organizations and stakeholders have recognized the need for educational programs to accomplish the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Sustainability competencies equip people to partake in and advance sustainable growth. While there are many potential benefits of service learning to students and professors, it is not a commonly used tool in engineering education. This work compares three experiences in which service-learning was used to develop sustainability competencies among engineering students. The study cases include a semester project, a five-week block, and a full-time internship in which senior students worked with or for public officers in environmental projects in Nuevo León, México. The experiences' effectivity was assessed in terms of the involved sustainability competencies, technical proficiency, implementation of projects aimed at transforming the environment and common well-being, and usefulness of the final products, and individual reflections by the participating students. One of the main findings was that their participation in these experiences broadened the professional panorama of engineering students. Finally, suggestions for enhancing the structure of service-learning experiences to ensure the development of sustainability competencies are also provided.