Driving Sustainable Change: Reflections from SEFI and the Future of Mechanical Engineering Education
Sustainability is a core theme in Engineering Education, and here Dr Julia Carrell, who presented work at The European Society for Engineering Education’s annual conference, SEFI 2025, reminds us not only why. Not only that, but Julia’s work gives insight and evidence backed ideas as to how engineering educators can teach sustainability effectively, and here she provides personal insights from the conference.
I attended the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) Annual Conference in September 2025, along with colleagues from across the Faculty of Engineering at Sheffield, and representing the Centre for Engineering Education (CEE). The conference theme was ‘Engineering and Society’, a perfect fit for my pedagogical research in education for sustainable development. For University Teachers like myself, and the CEE, conferences like SEFI are more than just an opportunity to share research. They are an opportunity for collaboration, which could help to shape the future of our pedagogy.
Sharing our Work: Sustainability in the Curriculum
One highlight of my trip was the opportunity to present my paper on integrating
sustainability into the mechanical engineering curriculum. The transition
to a more sustainable society and the push for Net Zero are no longer
"optional extras" in engineering; they are the core challenges of the
profession. My presentation focused on how we can move beyond isolated
"green modules" and instead integrate sustainability into the design
curriculum in mechanical engineering. For sustainable solutions to work, we as
Engineers have to consider social sustainability as well as the technical or
environmental. Everything engineers do impacts people, but I feel that often we
get lost in the technical detail and don’t consider how solutions work for the
social groups using them, like racist
soap dispensers or sexist
car safety features, and many more! The curriculum I have proposed and
begun to implement addresses sustainability in a broader sense. My presentation
generated some engaging discussions with colleagues from around the world,
confirming that there is a collective desire to ensure our graduates are not
just technically proficient, but "sustainability-literate" leaders.
Power in Numbers: Sustainability at Scale
The most impactful moment of the conference for me was attending the sustainability special interest group meeting. I met a group of passionate educators from various institutions who are all grappling with the same challenge: Teaching sustainability at scale. We found that we all share the same teaching challenges.
How do we deliver meaningful sustainability education to cohorts of hundreds of students? How do we ensure sustainability is visible in the curriculum? How do we assess them in a meaningful way?
From this meeting, led by a colleague, Valentina Rossi at EPFL, we have formed a working group on the topic. We have been sharing best practices and are starting to look at developing a framework for large-scale sustainability education. Our goal is to collaborate over the coming year and hopefully be able to present some of our progress and findings at the next SEFI conference. By pooling our resources and diverse institutional perspectives, we hope to create a blueprint that others can adopt.
Rethinking How We Measure Success: A Focus on Assessment
The discussions at SEFI also prompted a deep dive into my own educational practice, particularly regarding assessment in mechanical engineering. An area I found not to be a focus during the conference was the need for "authentic assessment". As part of some curriculum redevelopment work I have been doing, it has become an area I think about a lot! Moving away from traditional high-stakes exams toward methods that better reflect real-world engineering challenges. As part of our new working group’s agenda, I am currently exploring better ways to assess student competency in both technical engineering and sustainability.
If we want students to value sustainability, our assessments must reflect that value. This means looking at how we measure systems thinking, ethical decision-making, and long-term impact analysis alongside traditional mechanical calculations. These are interesting challenges I’m looking forward to tackling.
Looking Ahead
Returning to Sheffield, I felt inspired to continue with my pedagogical research and have started working on new research proposals. The insights gained from the global SEFI community have reinforced that the work we are doing here at Sheffield and the CEE is part of a much larger, vital movement. The journey toward a fully integrated, sustainable engineering curriculum is essential, and with new collaborators by my side and a fresh focus on innovative assessment, I am excited to see what we can achieve before we meet again at SEFI next year.
Interested in sustainability in engineering or want to
discuss new assessment methods? Get in touch with me;
j.carrell@sheffield.ac.uk.
When citing this work, please use the following
citation:
Carrell, J. (2026). “Driving Sustainable Change: Reflections
from SEFI and the Future of Mechanical Engineering Education”. Centre for
Engineering Education Blog, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. March
2026.