ICT Engineering at UPM

The Polytechnic University of Madrid with more than 35.000 students and 53 bachelor’s degrees is making achievements to introduce sustainability in the ICT engineering and in extent in all engineering studies [1]. It is being achieved mainly by the promotion of the Vice President for Quality of the inclusion of the SDGs in the subjects, reflecting it in their teaching guides. In addition, for several years there have been calls to support the completion of Final Projects related to the sustainability of the campus and international cooperation for development. Furthermore, recently, the university participates in two projects: EELISA and EDINSOST. 

On one hand, EELISA project comprehends all engineering degrees. On the other hand, EDINSOST project examines two engineering studies, but not ICT engineering. However, the researchers involved in the project are trying to incorporate it as well in the project. The reason to do so is to define the current state of sustainability knowledge level that is being taught in ICT bachelor’s degree.

Different actions have been carried out in order to define and improve the performance of sustainability within the degree. One of the most significant actions was to incur in the learning guides the SDGs that were dealt with in each of the ICT subjects. 

With a view to the introduction of particularly relevant concepts related to sustainability in the subjects of degrees, different teaching guides were explored to identify which subjects currently deal with the so-called “soft skills” related topics that could reach all students due to their mandatory nature. The subjects detected were the following:

  • Business management fundamentals
  • Introduction to Telecommunications Engineering
  • Business organization
  • English I and II

Once this analysis has been carried out, the next step, the one in which the process currently finds itself, is to interview each of the responsible teachers to identify the level to which these topics are treated and thus be able to know the real state of the introduction of sustainability. After that, the incorporation of the missing concepts will be studied in order to give students a holistic and complete knowledge.

Finally, another action that has been carried out for the 2022/2023 academic year has been to introduce two hours without teaching that are destined for presentations by young researchers, activities related to EELISA project and in extent activities of the communities with the objective of increasing the school knowledge.

Bibliography:

[1] https://www.upm.es/