Accreditation of Environmental Engineering Education at the School of Engineering, University of Firenze (Italy)

In the wide framework of the knowledge triangle: education-innovation-research, the accreditation of environmental engineering education is here discussed. The application of the European Accreditation of Engineering Programmes EUR-ACE® model to the multidisciplinary first cycle degree in Civil, Building and Environmental Engineering and the more specific second cycle degree in Environmental Engineering, based on the European Credit Transfer System and in accordance with the Bologna Process, running at the School of Engineering, is discussed. Particularly, the critical issues to guarantee the quality and the status of environmental engineering graduates, in terms of applying knowledge capacities and technical innovative competences, according the Dublin Descriptors or the more engineering focused EUR-ACE® skill descriptors, and at local and global scale are preliminary examined and compared. The involvement of the professional working world in the definition of goals in skills, of typical expectations of achievements and abilities, and in general in comparing the teaching profile with the actual needs of the technical workforce, is also briefly described. The system for educating environmental engineers in knowledge and understanding, making informed judgments and choices, communication and learning skills, capacities to lifelong learning, is also considered.