Momentum Towards Incorporating Global Responsibility in Engineering Education and Accreditation in the UK

CONTEXT Engineering is uniquely placed to help address global challenges such as those surrounding the climate crisis, and the sustainable use and management of resources. However, studies have found UK engineering companies that have adopted sustainability strategies do not have enough staff with the skills to achieve them. There is an urgent need to upskill the current workforce and prepare future generations to operate in a responsible and ethical manner in tackling today\u27s challenges. Recent updates to the standard of engineering accreditation in the UK provide notable opportunities to transform university curricula to create globally responsible engineers. PURPOSE This preliminary study explores the integration of global responsibility areas of learning and skill sets in engineering education accreditation. Recent revisions to accreditation are to be implemented at the end of 2021. The purpose of this study is to highlight how global responsibility principles are integrated and framed in engineering accreditation in the UK today. APPROACH This paper explores patterns within the recent updates made to engineering accreditation in the UK. The previous third edition and newly published fourth edition of the Engineering Council Accreditation of Higher Education Programmes (AHEP) are central to this research. Forward looking strategies from prominent voices in the sector including the Royal Academy of Engineering (2020-2025) and Engineers Without Borders UK (2021-2030), are viewed through the lens of Bloom’s Taxonomy, a hierarchical model for categorizing learning objectives into levels of complexity, to generate preliminary findings. ACTUAL OUTCOMES Addressing sustainability, global responsibility and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires more complexity in a students’ learning process than engineering curricula currently provide. Sustainability, ethics, diversity and inclusion are fundamental to engineering education and enable inclusive design solutions and outcomes. The most notable change to AHEP is refining how global responsibility is presented and evolving the way it is taught. Changes incorporated in the new AHEP4 recognise the responsibility and skills needed of engineers to create positive change to society and global challenges. Yet by the time AHEP4 is realised the SDGs will be halfway through the Decade of Action. Achieving crucial SDG benchmarks will require both curricular change embedded in accreditation standards and a notable shift in the culture of engineering that embeds a professional commitment to behave more responsibly, individually and collectively. SUMMARY Incorporating global responsibility into engineering accreditation is necessary to prepare students to address global challenges. Newly updated accreditation standards frame engineering education around principles of globally responsible engineering while encouraging more complexity within the curricula, such as through problem-based learning approaches. This provides a strong starting point for engineering curricula and educators to prepare emerging engineers to act responsibly in the face of the urgent and dynamic global challenges

Background and Design of a Qualitative Study on Globally Responsible Decision-Making in Civil Engineering

Abstract: Organizations that regulate civil engineering have been pressing for integration of \u27global responsibility\u27 into higher education curricula since around 2006, with a goal of achieving environmental sustainability and social justice. In an effort led by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE, 2007, 2009), a global vision for civil engineering was identified. Within the UK, the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) has been leading the way alongside non-governmental organizations (Bourn & Neal, 2008). Via the in-progress study reported here, a UK-based research team is now studying the effects of ACSE and ICE initiatives. The team seeks to benchmark how global responsibility is perceived and enacted in civil engineering in the UK today and how engineering graduates have learned about and experienced globally responsible decision-making. Findings will hold value for the global community, as achieving sustainability is crucial to humanity, and indeed all life on Earth

A rapid assessment of re-opening nightlife whilst containing COVID-19 and preventing violence

At a time of national and international emergency, the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic has resulted in closures and restrictions on nightlife environments around the world including Wales. After months of control measures, many countries are now in the process of re-opening their nightlife economies. As these restrictions are gradually lifted, we face the challenge of how to safely re-open the night-time economy (NTE) whilst minimising risks of COVID-19 transmission, protecting night-time industries and ensuring the ‘new normal’ of nightlife does not exacerbate other public health problems, particularly violence

Effects of the neonicotinoid pesticide thiamethoxam at field-realistic levels on microcolonies of Bombus terrestris worker bumble bees

Copyright © 2013 Elsevier. Notice: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, 2014, Vol. 100, pp. 153-158 at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2013.10.027Neonicotinoid pesticides are currently implicated in the decline of wild bee populations. Bumble bees, Bombus spp., are important wild pollinators that are detrimentally affected by ingestion of neonicotinoid residues. To date, imidacloprid has been the major focus of study into the effects of neonicotinoids on bumble bee health, but wild populations are increasingly exposed to alternative neonicotinoids such as thiamethoxam. To investigate whether environmentally realistic levels of thiamethoxam affect bumble bee performance over a realistic exposure period, we exposed queenless microcolonies of Bombus terrestris L. workers to a wide range of dosages up to 98 μg kg−1 in dietary syrup for 17 days. Results showed that bumble bee workers survived fewer days when presented with syrup dosed at 98 μg thiamethoxam kg−1, while production of brood (eggs and larvae) and consumption of syrup and pollen in microcolonies were significantly reduced by thiamethoxam only at the two highest concentrations (39, 98 μg kg−1). In contrast, we found no detectable effect of thiamethoxam at levels typically found in the nectars of treated crops (between 1 and 11 μg kg−1). By comparison with published data, we demonstrate that during an exposure to field-realistic concentrations lasting approximately two weeks, brood production in worker bumble bees is more sensitive to imidacloprid than thiamethoxam. We speculate that differential sensitivity arises because imidacloprid produces a stronger repression of feeding in bumble bees than thiamethoxam, which imposes a greater nutrient limitation on production of brood.Natural Environment Research Council (NERC

Pregnancy and neonatal outcomes of COVID-19: The PAN-COVID study

Objective To assess perinatal outcomes for pregnancies affected by suspected or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. Methods Prospective, web-based registry. Pregnant women were invited to participate if they had suspected or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection between 1st January 2020 and 31st March 2021 to assess the impact of infection on maternal and perinatal outcomes including miscarriage, stillbirth, fetal growth restriction, pre-term birth and transmission to the infant. Results Between April 2020 and March 2021, the study recruited 8239 participants who had suspected or confirmed SARs-CoV-2 infection episodes in pregnancy between January 2020 and March 2021. Maternal death affected 14/8197 (0.2%) participants, 176/8187 (2.2%) of participants required ventilatory support. Pre-eclampsia affected 389/8189 (4.8%) participants, eclampsia was reported in 40/ 8024 (0.5%) of all participants. Stillbirth affected 35/8187 (0.4 %) participants. In participants delivering within 2 weeks of delivery 21/2686 (0.8 %) were affected by stillbirth compared with 8/4596 (0.2 %) delivering ≥ 2 weeks after infection (95 % CI 0.3–1.0). SGA affected 744/7696 (9.3 %) of livebirths, FGR affected 360/8175 (4.4 %) of all pregnancies. Pre-term birth occurred in 922/8066 (11.5%), the majority of these were indicated pre-term births, 220/7987 (2.8%) participants experienced spontaneous pre-term births. Early neonatal deaths affected 11/8050 livebirths. Of all neonates, 80/7993 (1.0%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Conclusions Infection was associated with indicated pre-term birth, most commonly for fetal compromise. The overall proportions of women affected by SGA and FGR were not higher than expected, however there was the proportion affected by stillbirth in participants delivering within 2 weeks of infection was significantly higher than those delivering ≥ 2 weeks after infection. We suggest that clinicians’ threshold for delivery should be low if there are concerns with fetal movements or fetal heart rate monitoring in the time around infection

Comparing relationships between single types of adverse childhood experiences and health-related outcomes: a combined primary data study of eight cross-sectional surveys in England and Wales

Objectives Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) show strong cumulative associations with ill-health across the life course. Harms can arise even in those exposed to a single ACE type but few studies examine such exposure. For individuals experiencing a single ACE type, we examine which ACEs are most strongly related to different health harms.Design Secondary analysis of combined data from eight cross-sectional general population ACE surveys.Setting Households in England and Wales.Participants 20 556 residents aged 18–69 years.Measures Ten self-reported outcomes were examined: smoking, cannabis use, binge drinking, obesity, sexually transmitted infection, teenage pregnancy, mental well-being, violence perpetration, violence victimisation and incarceration. Adjusted ORs and percentage changes in outcomes were calculated for each type of ACE exposure.Results Significance and magnitude of associations between each ACE and outcome varied. Binge drinking was associated with childhood verbal abuse (VA), parental separation (PS) and household alcohol problem (AP), while obesity was linked to sexual abuse (SA) and household mental illness. SA also showed the biggest increase in cannabis use (25.5% vs 10.8%, no ACEs). Household AP was the ACE most strongly associated with violence and incarceration. PS was associated with teenage pregnancy (9.1% vs 3.7%, no ACEs) and 5 other outcomes. VA was associated with 7 of the 10 outcomes examined.Conclusion Exposure to a single ACE increases risks of poorer outcomes across health-harming behaviours, sexual health, mental well-being and criminal domains. Toxic stress can arise from ACEs such as physical and SA but other more prevalent ACEs (eg, VA, PS) may also contribute substantively to poorer life course health