Environmental Engineer Profile: Active Learning in Engineering Education

Abstract

Several discussions have been raised in higher education institutions for the formation of the environmental engineering graduate profile to fulfill the innovations of Industry 4.0 and the tripod of sustainability, required by the labor market. The agencies responsible for the management of engineering courses have established a series of changes in the teaching plans of the curricula of engineering courses in Brazil so that universities can attend the contemporary trends in the global market. The aim of this study is to identify the profile of the egress of the environmental engineering course at a public Brazilian university, verifying the impressions and demands of this public about their professional training; investigating the demands and the constitution of the professional profile determined by companies, in order to compare what the educational institution is dealing with in the curricular parameters versus what the market is demanding; raising the demands of the boards for engineering curricula updates and, finally, verifying if the parameters determined as requirements of the engineering boards are being fulfilled by the university under study. The results indicate that the graduate profile not only brings evidence of how the university has been acting in the competencies and skills in engineering courses. It was also found that active methodologies have a significant role to perform in the teaching-learning of the new engineering education requirements. We conclude that the skills and competencies focused on economic, social, environmental, and humanistic issues complete the profile of the environmental engineering graduate in the modern times.