In August 2025, Engineering for One Planet (EOP) proudly welcomed a cohort of 19 engineering students to the EOP Student Ambassador Pilot Program and the EOP Network.
The Engineering for One Planet (EOP) Student Ambassador Program enables students to advocate for the integration of social and environmental sustainability across engineering education. By equipping students with the knowledge and tools to engage faculty and campus leaders, the program aims to amplify their voices in curricular transformation efforts. Through meaningful dialogue and action, EOP Student Ambassadors will foster a culture of sustainability on campuses and accelerate curricular change, supporting future engineers to design and innovate with the planet and its people in mind.
The Engineering for One Planet (EOP) Student Ambassador Program envisions a future where every engineering curriculum incorporates sustainability as a core principle, preparing students to address global environmental challenges.
Learn more about our pilot cohort below.
At a glance: initial cohort statistics for the Engineering for One Planet (EOP) Student Ambassador Program pilot.
In 2023, at the annual EOP Network convening, the EOP Network identified student engagement as a priority for the 2023-2024 year. At the convening, a group of network members formed the Empowering Student Voices committee in order to strategically plan for effective student engagement of both undergraduate and graduate students. Half of the committee formed a Future Faculty subcommittee, which focused on educating graduate students/future faculty on how to integrate sustainability in their teaching. The other half of the committee formed the Student Ambassador Program (SAP) subcommittee, which sought to engage undergraduate students in curricular change.
The SAP subcommittee began by performing research at the Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) conference in 2023 to understand what sustainability-focused content and opportunities students had access to on their campuses, versus what content and opportunities they sought. The results are below.
Results of the research conducted with student participants at the 2023 Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) conference (ESWcon23) to understand their experience accessing sustainability-focused educational activities.
The committee combined this research with anonymous autoethnographies sourced from current students and recent graduates from the EOP Network in order to better understand the student experience. The findings are captured in a 2024 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) paper titled “Empowering Change: The Role of Student Changemakers in Advancing Sustainability within Engineering Education”.
After publishing this paper in June 2024, the committee conducted additional research into other student changemaker programs and began to plan for the roll out of the pilot program in the 2025-2026 school year. After months of research and planning, recruitment began at the 2025 Engineers for a Sustainable World conference in March 2025 and continued via outreach to schools affiliated with the EOP Network, and their partners, through May 2025. Students were interviewed that month and final selections were made in June 2025.
Learn more about the research, planning and design of the EOP Student Ambassador Pilot Program in the 2025 ASEE paper titled “Bridging the Green Skills Gap: Engaging Undergraduate Students as Changemakers”.