Program encourages sustainability focus

As a chemical engineer and an environmentalist, long-time U-M professor Walter J. Weber Jr.'s goal is to develop ways to preserve the planet's resources for his great-great-grandchildren.

With that in mind, Weber developed a curriculum called the Concentrations in Environmental Sustainability (ConsEnSus) program. Through the program, students pursuing a degree in a traditional engineering discipline or those studying other fields take additional courses designed to enhance their knowledge of environmental issues and prepare them to integrate sustainability principles into professional practice.

Though the full ConsEnSus program now is offered only in the College of Engineering (CoE), many of its courses are open to any environmentally conscious student. One of these is Weber's "Case Studies in Environmental Sustainability," a hands-on course conducted in conjunction with various major industrial partners.

While ConsEnSus is growing steadily, Weber hopes more engineering students consider taking the four-course concentration adopted by the CoE curriculum committee in 2001, and that faculty and students outside of CoE will find ways to integrate ConsEnSus-type courses in their study programs.

"Engineers are often unwittingly responsible for many of the environmental challenges we're facing," Weber says, explaining one of the motivating reasons for developing the program.

"But engineers are also problem solvers, who, in concert with graduates from such other disciplines as those addressed in the School of Natural Resources and Environment, the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, and Architecture + Urban Planning must ultimately assume major responsibility for sustaining the environment."

Students in ConsEnSus must complete 12 credits in environmental sustainability, a sequence of courses including a number outside of CoE that prepare them to integrate environmental practices into their work.

Students from the five engineering departments that have adopted the
ConsEnSus curriculum get a special designation on their degree, indicating they have completed the program. Although students from departments that have not yet adopted the curriculum won't get that designation, Weber says, the courses still are highly valuable without the special designation.

Students who have gone through ConsEnSus "are much more valuable to industry and commerce because they understand the importance of looking at the consequences of use and recovery of energy and material resources," he says.

Weber's 40-plus year career in education, and his outspoken passion for preserving the environment and sustainable development, were toasted last month by a cover tribute article in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science and Technology.

To see the article, go to http://pubs.acs.org/journals/esthag/index.html# and click on A-Pages\ Back Issues\ Vol. 38, No.22, Nov. 15, 2004.

For information on ConsEnSus, go to http://www.engin.umich.edu/prog/consensus/.

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