Abstract:  Future environmental regulations are creating new employment requirements within traditional engineering organizations. These organizations require recent graduates to have a strong handle on environmental issues related to new product development. Since mechanical engineering curriculum is saturated with courses covering a broad spectrum of engineering fundamentals, there is little room to develop a separate course to teach principles of sustainable product design. This manuscript presents a novel method for teaching Design for Environment ( DfE ) strategies within a mechanical engineering product design course through the use of expert critiques. The results from this study indicate that integration of a critique based module within an existing design project is an effective medium for teaching sustainable product design. Also, receiving feedback in the form of design critiques, breeds innovative design modifications that lower the energy and carbon footprints of the design across multiple lifecycle stages. More importantly, the results indicate that after participating in this teaching module, students are more likely to apply the learned DfE principles within academia and industry.
