Promoting Synergies Between Sustainable Development Principles And Engineering Education
The growing urbanization on the African continent presents massive challenges to the sustainable development of infrastructure, housing and communities. The need for skilled professionals in the engineering field that can combine advanced technical expertise with high level sustainability thinking has emerged as critical challenges not only for social advancement, but also for higher education whose curricula and teaching and research praxes are often not aligned with the needs of society. The School of Engineering at the University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN) in South Africa has conceptualized and implemented an educational response that is both catalytic, transformative and responsive to these challenges. This is in the Hub for the African City of the Future (AfriHub) a platform for multi disciplinary engagement that draws on synergies from diverse stakeholders to innovate engineering education in support of promoting the sustainable development of future African cities. This paper discusses the barriers and challenges that gave reasons to the proposal of the AfriHub as an overarching philosophy to create synergies between engineering education and sustainability. Also, it explains the main characteristics of the AfriHub and how it operates particularly through specific research and educational programs which aim at specific sustainability targets under its umbrella.
2017 7th World Engineering Education Forum (WEEF)