Sustainable Development Goals in technological universities. The case of UPC-Barcelona Tech University

Since the early nineties sustainability education in Technological Universities has been being promoted with different success rates. Some universities have put a lot of effort in training engineers and architects with sustainability competences (KTH, Chalmers UT, TUDelft, UPC, etc.). The Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya (UPC-Barcelona Tech) decided to introduce in 2005 the transversal competences “Sustainability and Social Commitment” that all students have to master when graduating.

After almost thirty years of implantation, one of the main barriers to embed sustainability in Technological curricula is the vague and diffuse understanding of sustainability and sustainable development by the education community. Our hypothesis is that the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) defined in the Agenda 2030 (Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development) by UN may facilitate the concretion of sustainability vagueness and allow its embeddedness in the technological curricula.

The research aims at defining guidelines to implement SDGs learning at technological degrees. This paper shows the results of the analysis of the sustainability competence learning by UPC students and a guidelines proposal of how the SDGs could improve the learning of Sustainability competences at the 70 undergraduate degrees that UPC-Barcelona Tech is offering. Results will be easily exported to any technological degree..

A mix-research methodology is used with quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews and focus group) analysis applied at students and faculty staff.

At the time of writing this abstract the research is in its initial phase but by the time to submit the paper we expect to have qualitative and quantitative results that confirm that SDGs structure can play a crucial role to train the future graduates with the competences needed to lead the transition to a more sustainable society.