Exploring Interdisciplinary Contributions to More Sustainable Solutions in the Built Environment and Infrastructure Development Students

Current world challenges require complex solutions from multifaceted and interdisciplinary developments. There is significant research that supports the idea that the contemporary world stands on the interaction of different fields of knowledge. Similarly, the higher impact on solutions and developments is directly related to the level of interdisciplinarity of the developing team. This paper looks at current interdisciplinary practices in engineering education through a successful case study. Specifically, we investigated a student team that participated in a worldwide concrete contest and whose proposed solution obtained first place. The members of such teams came from different backgrounds, areas of expertise, and levels of knowledge. This preliminary exploratory study uses a content analysis of the characteristics in the solution presented by the students to identify sustainability traits and their multidisciplinary connection. The results suggest that interactions in interdisciplinary teams promote designs that maximize efficient solutions. The authors set up the path for future work to conduct interviews and focus groups with the members of the student team and the advising instructors to understand the differentiated contributions of each member and their characteristics. The authors reflect on the avenue that academia could take to form new pedagogical approaches that include interdisciplinarity in engineering schools.