The intensive representation of academic contents with conceptual maps, along with laboratory and field work, became a package of measures to reduce the student desertion during the development of the integrated air quality management course; it traditionally presents difficulties by his condition of “conceptual island” inside the environmental engineering curriculum by his thematic singularities and abstraction demanding level. After four cohortes directed and evaluated with the tool of conceptual map, the students have obtained better academic results, the work class environment has improved and the academic losses was reduced. The Integrated Air Quality Management course is now a referent for other courses of Environmental Engineering program in the Central University, Bogota (Colombia)