Dr. Tamara Etmannski, an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Department of Civil Engineering, was recently recognized as a UBC Sustainability Fellow. She will join a panel of distinguished faculty and participate in monthly meetings to devise strategies on propelling sustainability education at UBC.
UBC Sustainability Fellowships are awarded to full-time faculty members who are initiating the development of innovative sustainability courses and programs. The grant aims to support the incorporation of experiential, applied and interdisciplinary sustainability education principles into a transformative learning environment.
Dr. Etmannski has had extensive experience spearheading curriculum development. Over the past decade, she aided in the creation of 11 distinct professional master’s programs, in addition to a variety of new courses, such as APPP 502, APSC 542 and COMM 386i. She has also previously held the title of Sustainability Fellow in the 2022/23 academic year, during which she co-created 4 interdisciplinary sustainability modules that were implemented in CIVL403 (Engineering Economics).
She plans to utilize this grant to increase carbon/sustainability accounting literacy across large commerce, engineering and wood science courses through increasing modular course content, including cases and interactive experiential learning exercises. Carbon accounting, climate reporting, embodied carbon calculations and life-cycle analysis are just a few of the topics falling under the newly conceived content scope. A portion of the funds will also go towards hiring students to assist in developing quantitative case studies intended for usage in CIVL 302, 402 and 403.
Dr. Etmannski believes that the growing need to include interdisciplinary elements in sustainability for engineers stems from an evolution of engineering as a profession in recent years. “It is important for engineers to be exposed to sustainability through the lens of other disciplines so they can better connect their designs into complex systems,” she says.