The Making of Green Engineers: Sustainable Development and the Hybrid Imagination

The book takes its point of departure in three very different sorts of challenges that confront engineering in the contemporary world. On the one hand, there is an overarching sustainability challenge: the need for engineers to relate to the problems brought to light in the debates about environment [...]
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The book takes its point of departure in three very different sorts of challenges that confront engineering in the contemporary world. On the one hand, there is an overarching sustainability challenge: the need for engineers to relate to the problems brought to light in the debates about environmental protection, resource depletion, and climate change. There are also a range of societal challenges that are due to the permeation of science and technology into ever more areas of our societies and everyday lives, and finally, there are the intrinsic technological challenges stemming from the emergence of new fields of "technosciences" that mix science and technology in new combinations. How are universities responding to the "internal" transformations taking place in science and engineering and the "external" challenges from the world outside? The book contrasts three contending response strategies: a commercial strategy that links scientists and engineers into networks or systems of innovation; an academic strategy that reasserts the traditional values of science and engineering; and an integrative strategy that aims to combine scientific knowledge and engineering skills with cultural understanding and social responsibility by fostering what the author terms a "hybrid imagination." The book has been written as part of the Program of Research on Opportunities and Challenges in Engineering Education in Denmark (PROCEED), funded by the Danish Strategic Research Council.