There isn’t a textbook yet on sustainable aviation, but thanks to aerospace engineering Professor Phillip Ansell, there is a creative, interactive, first-of-its-kind course at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign designed to help undergraduate and graduate students approach the challenges of sustainable aviation in new ways.
Ansell was selected by The Grainger College of Engineering to receive the 2024 Rose Award for Teaching Excellence.
“For the most part, aircraft design innovation has been incremental for decades,” said Jonathan Freund, Willett professor and head of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Illinois. “That is going to change with increasing electrification and alternate fuels, especially hydrogen. Phil has established himself as an international academic thought leader in this, and he has brought his comprehensive vision into his new course.”
One example of the way Ansell helps his students think sustainably is in an assignment he calls “Opinions of the Court.” The activity was inspired by the practices of the US Supreme Court, where justices arrive at a final, collective judgment, delivered by one justice. In addition to the final Opinion, individual justices can also provide concurring or dissenting opinions in this document, which can express further support or opposition of components or entire frameworks of the collective opinion.
For the assignment, students are randomly assigned to a group and given a prompt on one or more high-level challenges related to sustainable aviation. The first one is to define sustainable aviation.
“That may sound simple, but it’s difficult to do in practice if the numerous socio-techno-economic implications at play between the aviation industry and society are considered,” Ansell said. “The challenges are equal-part technical as they are philosophical. The groups are tasked with producing a 500-word consensus opinion in response to the prompt, alongside 200-word individual concurring or dissenting opinions. Since producing consensus opinions across teams is markedly more challenging than providing individual opinions, this exercise requires students to expand their thinking to also include a host of ideas from their peers.”
Ansell has observed the assignment pushing the students to engage in challenging, even tumultuous discussions to reach a consensus. “Each student still has a chance in the individual responses to identify areas that they stand behind, or areas that they disagree with, relative to the consensus opinion.”
The students are assessed on the quality of their argument, rather than their specific stance.
Freund said this kind of training encourages students to look at many options to obtain the best solutions through integration of diverse ideas and strategies. “This is a very important skill in general, but particularly in face of the ongoing evolution of this area. It breaks the traditional model of classroom education in technical areas of answers being right or wrong.”
Ansell joined the aerospace engineering faculty as an assistant professor in 2015 and was promoted to associate professor in 2021. He received the College of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award in 2022, the AIAA Teacher of the Year award in 2020, and consistently appears in the List of Teacher Ranked Excellent by their Students.