Certificate-Based Good Practice To Motivate Engineering Students To Learn Sustainability Skills

Engineering plays a crucial role both in addressing sustainability challenges and in helping to achieve the sustainability transition. However, tackling the complex problems of sustainability needs a broader understanding of these issues from nonengineering perspectives as well. The Department of Environmental Economics and Sustainable Development of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences (GTK), has developed a unique method for a uniform certification of studies in the fields of sustainability, environmental economics, and environmental management for engineering students. The so-called green certificate is provided after the successful completion of at least five elective courses such as sustainable business models, green economic development, smart and sustainable digitalisation-related solutions, sustainable rural or urban development, sustainable energy management or climate change oriented courses etc. The certificate can be obtained either in the framework of a bachelor's or master's degree programme, and it is available both in Hungarian and in English, even for incoming mobility students. By achieving the green certificate, the engineering students gain a complex vision, a sustainability mindset and a truly green attitude. Our study analyses the green certificates' data quantitatively, focusing on the engineering students' profiles and the most frequently chosen courses. Our results can help further refine our methods to reach even more engineering students, and it can serve as a good practice to follow for other universities.