This course aims to focus on global challenges facing environmental engineers in the twenty-first century. The course will call upon technical knowledge senior students have gained over the course of the first three years of their education and use this knowledge and their ideas initially to identify and investigate major environmental challenges facing the world, and then grasp and devise ways to contribute to the solution process. From a perspective of holistic engineering education, this course will help actively contextualize the environmental engineer’s role in global debates using a whole systems approach; by integrating in-depth technical knowledge on environmental problems and solutions with topics that provide breadth such as social responsibility, policy and entrepreneurial thinking.  By this approach and exposure to global issues, engineering expertise can be put to use on complex environmental, social, energy, economic and technical challenges of the twenty first century.

Through relevant course components (i.e. reading assignments, weekly tasks, discussion hours) students will obtain information and find opportunity to create innovative solutions regarding pressing challenges that the world currently faces and be able to form opinions on these issues from a variety of perspectives. Guest lectures are planned to bring together students with professionals working on such global challenges. Presentations as well as discussion hours involving invited guests will provide an interactive environment in the classroom for fruitful discussions.

As opposed to the specific challenges in the field of environmental engineering such as treatment of a particular type of pollutant from wastewater or a gaseous emission, this course aims to provide a larger scale, global framework on environmental issues which will enable a wider perspective for students regarding global problems that the world faces. In such challenges, there may not be one single solution, or approach by professionals of one or two disciplines. Here, environmental engineers are desperately needed to contribute to and perhaps act as the leader for devising solutions in a multi-disciplinary environment.