International Conference on Engineering Education in Sustainable Development EESD2004 D. Ferrer-Balas, K. F. Mulder, J. Bruno and R. Sans (Eds.)  CIMNE and UPC Barcelona, 2004 Integration of Sustainable Development at Dutch Universities for Professional Education: the CIRRUS approach J. Venselaar 1 , T.M.N. Severijn 1 1 Expertcenter Sustainable Business Operation Avans Hogeschool, University of Applied Sciences PO Box 1097, 5004 BB Tilburg, the Netherlands E-mail: j.venselaar@avans.nl Key words: engineering education, sustainable development, Abstract. The paper describes the results of a pilot project for a novel approach to introduce sustainable development in engineering eduction. That concerns a full integration in the study with the goal that all students develop a basic understandingt and are trained in the specific aspects of sustainable issues and the tools to handle it that belong to their specific field. The pilot project has been ended a year ago. The lessons learned during the project and in the further implementation of the reults are discussed. It forms part of a larger program to instroduce sustainable development in Dutch higher education. 1. INTRODUCTION If sustainable development is to become an essential aspect of society and economical development, it has to become as well an essential part of education. In the Netherlands various initiatives have been taken to reach that aim. Different approaches exist on the various universities and UAS’s 1 ):  separate courses on sustainable development and specific issues as energy and building.  multistudent projects involving different studies on a specific sustainability issue  complete integration of sustainability in the engineering study. The approaches differ also in the size and the time spend on it. It can be an only small part of the curriculum, such as an introductory course. Courses can be made obligatory or not. In several studies however extensive time and attention is paid to sustainable development and the consequence it has for engineering. In some case it has also become a specialization within a specific engineering study. The Dutch development program “Sustainable Technological Development” (STD) [1] has defined the basic characteristics of the most likely and feasible routes towards real sustainable development. The essential feature of such routes is based on a paradigm shift in developing, designing and implementing technology. Asked for are ’system innovations’ and ‘transitions’, aimed at satisfying needs and less at ‘just optimisation’ of the isolated performance of products and processes’. It is often not so much the character of technologies that influences ‘sustainability’ as the way they are used. [2, 3] 1 UAS : Universities of Applied Sciences are the Dutch institutes of higher education for applied sciences (German: Hochschule)