The focus of this proposal is to introduce a model of integrated engineering research for the development of dissertation projects that bridge the technical aspects of engineering comprehension to the educational components of engineering education, centering on the development of essential competencies in the engineering profession. As part of this integrated graduate research approach, the purpose is to help students engage in new experiences with academic research that provide opportunities to be exposed to two central parts that comprise the T-shape of the engineering profession – technical skills and interdisciplinary skills related to effective teaching at the postsecondary level (Jorgensen et al., 2019). Leveraging the Renaissance Foundry Model (herein the Foundry), an innovation-driven learning platform, graduate students that develop an integrated research dissertation are encouraged to engage in essential critical and design thinking skills that help them to visualize the connections between these technical and educational components of a comprehensive research project (Sanders et al., 2021). The Foundry incorporates six elements to help students through a guided process of design thinking that begins with the identification of a challenge (e.g., the larger, connected research questions), uses organizational tools, resources, documentation cycles, and the linear engineering sequence as foundations to help develop a prototype of innovative technology (e.g., an integrated research project) (Arce et al., 2015). Two paradigms, knowledge acquisition and knowledge transfer, help students to anchor these six elements and formulate an integrated research project that offers a holistic perspective to traditional engineering research methods. For this particular work, we present the integrated research project of one doctoral student whose focus is on understanding sustainability concepts in chemical engineering.

The dissertation featured for this contribution centers on research questions that bridge together the connections between sustainability as applied to technical concepts and the core competencies that are essential as part of the development of chemical engineers’ understanding of sustainability from an engineering education lens.

Adopting the Engineering for One Planet (EOP) based sustainability principle, this work focuses on synthesis and characterization of solar light active photocatalyst for its application to photocatalytic degradation of the pharmaceutical contaminants present in the water. On the pedagogical application, pairing of the EOP framework with Foundry model provides the structural and systematic direction for adaptation of sustainability principles in engineering curriculum. The sustainability concept as applied pedagogically and technically in a four-year rural engineering curriculum not only guides engineering students to theoretically learning of the ideas but also helps to showcase the concept by the outcomes of hands-on experiment. Through this approach, there is an integration of two different research perspectives, demonstrating how these sustainability principles can be applied both technically and pedagogically, through a Foundry-guided approach. Implications regarding the adoption of this approach for other engineering or STEM disciplines is discussed, as well as an overview of the alignment of the design of this dissertation to a Foundry-guided approach is offered.

Keywords: Integrated Academic Research Projects, Renaissance Foundry Model, Innovation, Sustainability, Chemical Engineering, Engineering Education.