Contribution to Book
An Edible Education in Sustainable Development: Investigating Chocolate Manufacturing in a Laboratory-Based Undergraduate Engineering Course
Engineering Education for Sustainable Development
(2016)
Abstract
Green engineering, sustainability, and sustainable development are topics of
great import to all engineering disciplines. To introduce students to these topics,
hands-on experiments were developed for inclusion within a multi-disciplinary
freshman engineering course. In these experiments, students learned to produce
chocolate truffles and, ultimately, challenged to analyze and optimize the
sustainability of the process with a cradle-to-gate and social life cycle
assessments. Student analyses incorporated waste management strategies,
overall energy and material consumption calculations, carbon reduction
strategies, the use of engineering software, and the importance of fair trade in
this industry. Eighty-nine freshman engineering students at Rowan University
completed the experiments. Pre- and post-tests were used to evaluate the
effectiveness of the course on increasing student knowledge of sustainability, of
sustainable development, and of the impact engineers can have on socioeconomics.
Preliminary results indicate that the course was effective in enhancing
student knowledge and awareness of the social and environmental implications
of chocolate manufacturing. A complete analysis and description are presented
in this paper.
Keywords
- Education,
- sustainable development,
- Chocolate,
- Undergraduate course
Disciplines
Publication Date
January 1, 2016
Editor
W.L. Filho, S. Nesbit
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Series
World Sustainability Series
DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-32933-8_10
Citation Information
Alexander V. Struck Jannini, Christian M. Wisniewski, Mary M. Staehle, Joseph F. Stanzione, et al.. "An Edible Education in Sustainable Development: Investigating Chocolate Manufacturing in a Laboratory-Based Undergraduate Engineering Course" SwitzerlandEngineering Education for Sustainable Development (2016) p. 103 - 112 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/mary-staehle/6/