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Meaningful societal change begins with individual change. One cannot do for a community what one cannot do for one's self. The topic of Individual Sustainability is a controversial one, as students often appear to be unable to align their demonstrated behaviors with their admirable values related to sustainability. Individual behavior creates the foundation for action in social, economic, and environmental sustainability, and potentially guides our ability to work with one another to make life-affirming decisions. In short, it is a matter of aligning our day-to-day behaviors with our well-stated values that will result in greater sustainable community action.The general objective of this research is to determine how an interactive website providing multisource feedback on personality motivates students to change their behaviors or values, or to align their behaviors and values. We believe that creating a "cognitive dissonance" between individuals' values and behaviors tends to encourage them to balance more effectively the self-knowledge that motivates intentional personal development towards more sustainable behavior. Most students indicated changes in their awareness, behaviors, and values following the study, but fewer indicated a greater alignment between their values and behaviors.

This paper presents a model for teaching large classes that facilitates a "small class feel" to counteract the distance, anonymity, and formality that often characterize large lecture-style courses in higher education. One author (E.P.) has been teaching a 300-student general education critical thinking course for ten years, and the other (R.L.) has assisted in the administration and instruction of said course for four years. Detailed here is an instructional model, developed over a period of ten years, for teaching large classes that is more active, conversational, and characterized by stronger relationships between students and instructors than is typically found in large courses offered in higher education. This model relies on the role of teaching assistants and graders, small group work, instructor presence, writing skills support, student mentoring, and large class discussion, among others.

This paper describes the disciplinary program for writing and communications developed by the Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) Department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and StateUniversity, which has been integrated into eight required core courses spread across our students' three years of study. Preliminary quantitative assessment of the program indicates positive acceptance by the students and faculty, significant improvement in the quality of writing over three semesters, and significant differences in both the quality and style of writing between senior engineering students who have not participated in our program and our MSE students. We have found a positive correlation between four different indices designed to measure a student's self-assessment of communication skills and a student's grade point average (GPA). Surprisingly, there is no correlation between either students' grades on papers and projects, or our measure of their improvement in communication skills, and their GPA's. This result has important implications for the design and implementation of writing-withinthe-discipline programs such as the one described here. I. INTRODUCTIONIn August 1993, the Materials Science and Engineering Department (MSE) formally initiated a comprehensive undergraduate writing and communication program within the discipline to be integrated into eight required MSE courses over students' three years of study in the Department. The student-centered program focuses mostly on the development of students' discipline-specific writing skills but also includes instruction in public speaking, interpersonal communication in the workplace, and computer graphic design. In addition, the program includes faculty training and support for integrating writing into technical coursework, developing writing assignments, assisting students in revising their own writing, and grading written assignments. The program is an outgrowth of the efforts of one of us (RWH) to develop independently a higher level of communication skills in one of his courses during the previous three years. Other MSE faculty members were making similar attempts, especially in the senior capstone design course.The importance of technical writing, or more correctly, technical communication, in science and engineering education has been recognized ever since the development of the field of scientific management by Frederick Taylor and others at the turn of the century. However, through feedback to Virginia Tech from alumni, parents, industrial leaders, legislators, and the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV), it has been clear for several years that we have been doing an inadequate job of teaching students to communicate clearly and effectively through either the written or spoken word. The report of Virginia's Commission on the University of the 21st Century notes:We also should have a curriculum that helps students develop competence in public speaking, writing, listening, and seeing the world around them. The curriculum should, ...

Abstract:In order for our future engineers to be able to work toward a sustainable future, they must be versed not only in sustainable engineering but also in engineering design. An engineering education must train our future engineers to think flexibly and to be adaptive, as it is unlikely that their future will have them working in one domain. They must, instead, be versatilists. The School of Engineering at James Madison University has been developed from the ground up to provide this engineering training with an emphasis on engineering design, systems thinking, and sustainability. Neither design nor sustainability are mutually exclusive, and consequently, an education focusing on design and sustainability must integrate these topics, teaching students to follow a sustainable design process. This is the goal of the James Madison University School of Engineering. In this paper, we present our approach to curricular integration of design and sustainability as well as the pedagogical approaches used throughout the curriculum. We do not mean to present the School's model as an all or nothing approach consisting of dependent elements, but instead as a collection of independent approaches, of which one or more may be appropriate at another university.