Abstract
In classical lore, the “Gordian Knot” represents a problem so complex that the only way to disentangle it is to cut it apart. If environmental sustainability can be envisioned as a Gordian Knot, I posit that to break the links we must re-envision doctoral-level workforce education and sustainability. My path to, through, and almost out of engineering has honed a vision for this workforce-centric approach to sustainability that informs my educational and research agendas as an engineering professor. In academia, one of my missions is to help undergraduate and graduate students in my classes discover their own callings in engineering to solve messy sociotechnical engineering problems, like those related to energy or the environment. In a looser interpretation of sustainability, my other mission is to develop and sustain a passionate and inclusive engineering workforce, especially considering populations that have been marginalized in engineering. The two missions are not mutually exclusive: Should our doctoral students be pushed out of academic engineering, we lose these voices as thought-leaders who could drastically influence scientific research agendas, commercial opportunities, and technological innovations that could be leveraged to solve energy and environmental issues, and who could accelerate change in the hostile climate of engineering.
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Berdanier, C.G.P. (2022). Severing the Links of the “Gordian Knot”: Envisioning Doctoral-Level Engineering Education and Workforce Sustainability as a Key to Environmental Sustainability. In: Bailey, M., Shackelford, L. (eds) Women in Mechanical Engineering. Women in Engineering and Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91546-9_22
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