The United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) are the product of decades of work by the global organisation regarding roadmaps to surmount the myriad of challenges facing our generation, which if not tackled will spell doom and gloom for future generations. The UN terms the SDGs as a global call to action and “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all”. Articulated into 17 goals, 169 targets and 6124 actions, the lodestar outlines aspirations and actions to tackle hunger, poverty, health, clean energy, climate action, inequality, peace and justice.

The UN SDGs are an outline humanity’s war to save itself and all of us individually and collectively must be part of the battle. As knowledge producers, universities are considered the vanguard when it comes to empowering people to change the way they think towards a sustainable future. They provide knowledge, skills, and motivation for younger ones to appreciate the multi-faceted challenges facing us today and how they threaten their future. By this, tomorrow’s leaders are mobilised to confront today’s challenges. Through research by their faculty, students and staff, universities support governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other stakeholders to understand and implement the different SDGs.

On their own and by prompting from funding, ranking, and other organisations, universities have been galvanised to integrate SDGs into various aspects of their teaching, research, outreach, and engagement. While some have fashioned out new curricula, introduced new degrees at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, others have united research programmes aimed at supporting the SDGs.

As a first step, the Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University (PSAU) has started the process of SDG education by integrating its teaching across different programmes. Concomitant with this, through its first year introductory course on engineering design, the college of engineering initiated a carefully mentored programme through which students were introduced to the SDGs and guided towards fashioning out engineering solutions to the different challenges that the SDGs aim to address. Consequently, throughout the semester, working in groups of four to six, students brainstormed on the SDGs, identified problems that they could solve with the caveat that their solutions must produce tangible engineering outcomes, devices, or technologies addressing at least one SDG. Aptly themed “the role of engineering in attaining the UN SDGs,” the semester long mentoring for Spring 2022 produced ten engineering outcomes that addressed 13 of the 17 SDGs. These outcomes ranged from an electronic trash monitoring and disposal system to prevent health hazards posed by rotting and unattended waste to other sensor-based applications in baby monitoring, poultry farming, responsible consumption of water and electricity to solutions addressing local issues such as provision of conducive and ergonomic classroom equipment, portable emergency solar-powered flashlights, and a technology to enhance construction site safety. In another outcome with potentially wider applications, a group of students focused on addressing financial and health inequality faced by the mobility-impaired and disabled people by proposing an add-on that converts a manual wheelchair into a solar powered one within two minutes.

It is noteworthy that all the students are freshmen just commencing their engineering studies.

The enumerated outcomes were showcased as poster and physical outcome presentations during a well-attended SDG Week on 24 May 2022 at the newly erected SDG Ville in the university’s main campus. The publicity before the event, its carnival nature, and viability and excitement generated by of outcomes of the students’ projects provided the much needed awareness regarding the SDGs and engineers’ roles in their attainments.

This document provides a non-technical overview of the project outcomes as well as photos from the event, the first of periodic engagements by the university towards a better, safer, and sustainable future for us all.