Contemporary Systems Engineering for the UN SDGs and NAE Grand Challenges

: Systems engineering programs at US universities have been focusing more on sustainability, but systems approaches to sustainability are found in programs outside of a systems engineering context. Transdisciplinary collaboration has been emphasized to make progress toward the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), requiring new approaches to collaborative understanding on the student and faculty levels in academic environments. This paper provides a qualitative network analysis of systems approaches to sustainability across disciplines using a US university as a case study. The analysis mapped systems approaches at Worchester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) within and outside of WPI's Systems Engineering Program. We specifically focused on thematic areas regarding systems in social science domains pertaining to the SDGs, which need to be brought into a systems engineering context. This paper aims to identify potential areas of collaboration to accelerate progress toward the SDGs using systems approaches.