ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS OF CIVIL ENGINEERS IN THE CONTEXT OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY

In the context of the man-made burden on the natural environment, the issues of developing civil engineering students' environmental awareness are important and particularly relevant to low environmental security countries, which include Ukraine. The authors emphasize the need for broad implementation of the Concept of Sustainable Development in professional training of civil engineering students, determine the level of their environmental awareness, compare the levels of formation of environmental awareness components, and pursue to identify effective ways to environmentalize engineering training. The study involved the students of Donbas National Academy of Civil Engineering and Architecture. The authors selected the semi-structured questionnaire method combining rating, Likert and importance scales, alternative and unstructured questions, as well as elements of the Azapagic and the Naturafil techniques. The results did not prove the formation level of the civil engineering students' environmental awareness to be unsatisfactory. It was also found that the civil engineering students have steady environmental beliefs and are willing to comply with environmental norms in their activities. This fact brought the authors to the conclusion that the current practice of higher technical education in Ukraine takes account of sustainable development. The level of the civil engineering students' environmental knowledge was also determined as sufficient, while their environmental activity and environmental management skills were seen as low. According to the authors, the use of integrated and practice-oriented approaches to teaching professional subjects and the introduction of environmental topics into general education subjects will contribute to strengthened environmentalization of professional training of civil engineers.