Conference Session

Integrating Social Justice in Engineering Science Courses

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

James L. Huff, Harding University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Engineering Ethics, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Paper ID #12583Humanizing Signals and Systems: A Reflective AccountProf. James L. Huff, Harding University James Huff is an assistant professor of engineering at Harding University, where he primarily teaches multidisciplinary engineering design and electrical engineering. His research interests are aligned with how engineering students develop in their career identity while also developing as whole persons. James received his Ph.D. in engineering education and his his M.S. in electrical and computer engineering, both from Purdue University. He received his bachelor’s in computer engineering at Harding University

Conference Session

Reflective & Critical Pedagogies

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Prashant Rajan, Iowa State University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

2knowledge is associated with the adoption of an empathic design process inwhich innovators leverage their social and material embeddedness in localcommunities to observe and reflect on users’ technology-related behavior innaturalistic settings. Grassroots innovators engage with human needs inspecific geographical, economic, social, and cultural contexts and embody thepotential for knowledge-rich, resource-poor communities to developsuccessful indigenous solutions to local problems. Grassroots innovationsrepresent a community-based and user-driven model of technology designbased on empathy, sustainability and social responsibility that problematizerational, economic models of competitive innovation for profit that areprevalent in the literature and

Conference Session

Reflective & Critical Pedagogies

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Devika Patel, Stanford University; Jonathan Edward Pang, Stanford University; Sarah Salameh, Stanford University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

through multidisciplinary projectsand ethics from three students’ perspectives. From these case studies we examine the way we, asstudent engineers, reconcile technocentrism with ways of thinking utilized in liberal education.Analysis of the case studies imply a role for reflection and care in addressing technocentrism andour paper ends with a call for further studies analyzing these relationships.Introduction:“My app will change the world, my product is a disruptive innovation”―these are the mantras ofstartup founders, engineers, and computer scientists throughout the Silicon Valley. Writer JoelStein presents this profile of tech entrepreneurs in his Bloomsberg Businessweek article,Arrogance is Good: In Defense of Silicon Valley.3 This stereotype

Conference Session

Assessing Social Responsibility & Sustainability

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mark H Minster, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Richard A House, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Patricia Brackin P.E., Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Corey M. Taylor, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods, Engineering Ethics, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

applied, transformative, purposive knowledge and growth.51, 52Because professionalization is also an important goal in engineering education, our listculminates with several goals that build from affective, ethical, and cognitive foundations to themore specific abilities we expect of graduating engineering students. Each student and program instructor will be able to 1. recognize in context, discuss, and demonstrate attitudes, behaviors and personal reflection about their rights and responsibilities to themselves, others, society, and the natural world 2. recognize in context, discuss, and demonstrate attitudes, behaviors and personal reflection about their habits and growth, as well as others’, and the implications of

Conference Session

Communication Across the Divisions II: Communication and Transdisciplinary Pedagogies

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jeffrey J. Evans, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Amy S. Van Epps, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Michael Thomas Smith; Sorin Adam Matei, Purdue University Polytechnic Institute; Esteban Garcia

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Civil Engineering, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Mechanical Engineering, Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering

Narratives aims to provide students with a toolkit for successfulcommunication in contemporary society and the workplace. This integrated course experience invitesstudents to reflect and use diverse ways of communication in the digital era. During one semester,participants were introduced to oral, written, visual and auditory techniques of communication, anddocumented through various digital media artifacts. Page 26.127.3Our value proposition that artistic storytelling can help students think, communicate and aid in theiremotional wellbeing is backed by a long history of scholarship. Such seminal articles as K. Egan’s“Memory, Imagination

Conference Session

Non-Canonical Canons of Engineering Ethics

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Donna M Riley, Virginia Tech; Yanna Lambrinidou, Virginia Tech

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Engineering Ethics, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering

, emotional, and self-reflective livesof engineers themselves that fail to “fit into” prevailing professional paradigms of thought andpractice.Cannons refers then not only to military annihilation but also to the systematic drowning out ofvoices/perspectives that diverge from, challenge, or oppose the engineering status quo. Wepropose that these voices and perspectives are essential for the development of technically andmorally robust engineering research and practice. In fact, they are the very thing that wouldenable engineering to truly hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public, andrealize philosopher Charles Harris’ proposed ideal of bettering “the material basis of humanwell-being or quality of life.”3This paper engages in a

Conference Session

Assessing Social Responsibility & Sustainability

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Justin L Hess, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Sarah Aileen Brownell, Rochester Institute of Technology; Richard A House, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Alexander T. Dale, Engineers for a Sustainable World

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods, Engineering Ethics, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

implement the SSDS and illustrate the findings when usingthis survey pre- and post- course with students who participated in WPSI across threeuniversities during the Fall of 2014. Results from these components are triangulated withstudents’ end-of-semester written reflections and participating instructors’ course experiences.This qualitative component allowed us to consider how WPSI might be improved in future Page 26.508.3iterations, as well as broader implications of the SSDS and WPSI for engineering educationcourses and curriculum.For anonymity, throughout this paper we will refer to course offerings as Course 1, 2, and 3. Thisframing puts the

Conference Session

Communication Across the Divisions III: Writing as Social–Technical Integration

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Vukica M. Jovanovic, Old Dominion University; Megan McKittrick, Old Dominion University; Pilar Pazos, Old Dominion University; Daniel Richards, Old Dominion University; Julia Romberger

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Computing & Information Technology, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

and texts as resulting from typified behaviors, knowledge, and actions of agiven community of practice: “[T]o write, to engage in any communication is to participate in acommunity; to write well is to understand the conditions of one’s own participation with thatcommunity and determine the success or failure of communication”11. As such, genres reflect thevalue systems of individual organizations (e.g., a stand alone business) and also large scalecommunities (e.g., engineers). Being a proficient writer means becoming intimatelyknowledgeable of the conditions of participation in a given community of practice. According toJames Dubinsky, “our work [as professors] involves more than teaching our students strategies orforms; it also

Conference Session

Integrating Social Justice in Engineering Science Courses

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Juan C. Lucena, Colorado School of Mines; Jon A. Leydens, Colorado School of Mines

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Engineering Ethics, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

, become inherently about social justice.Interestingly, this separation of institutional locations where engineering science and research areallowed to live (and not to live) is reflected in NSF’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates(REU) program. Of the 640 REU sites currently listed, only 4 include community colleges(nsf.gov).The processes and people involved in this definition also influenced what went in theengineering curriculum and what stayed out. For example, Rolston and Cox argue that by takingthe “mind out of the shop” and into the university, engineering educators throughout the 20thcentury recreated a class division with significant social justice dimensions: “The shift in focus of engineering training from the job

Conference Session

Integrating Social Justice in Engineering Science Courses

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kathryn Johnson, Colorado School of Mines; Jon A. Leydens, Colorado School of Mines; Barbara M. Moskal, Colorado School of Mines; Deborath Silva, Colorado School of Mines; Justin Stephen Fantasky, Colorado School of Mines

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Engineering Ethics, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

reinforced a meritocracy ideology within the profession. Cech argues that, inorder to accommodate social justice education, that a “cultural space” must be created withinengineering by addressing depoliticization and meritocracy.In a discussion on diversity in engineering, Riley notes that engineering’s lack of significantdiversity may be reflective of fundamental issues within the profession rather than theavailability and use of effective recruitment and retention tools; Lucena [8] has raised this issueas well. Concerns about diversity may at first appear to be political rather than technical innature. Downey et al. [9] has argued that in a global world, engineers need to be able to workwell with people who think differently, and diversity within

Conference Session

Assessing Social Responsibility & Sustainability

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Nathan E Canney PE, Seattle University; Angela R Bielefeldt, University of Colorado, Boulder; Mikhail Russu

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Educational Research and Methods, Engineering Ethics, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

ofthe course, gender, and the instructor’s personal encouragement of the students to engage insocial activism. Philosophy and religion courses were the most commonly cited types of HSScourses mentioned by students, with religion courses being almost entirely from students at thefive religiously affiliated schools.Other course types that were seen in student responses included senior design (10% of seniors)and first-year introductory and engineering projects courses (10% of total, 22% of first-years).Very few students referenced math or natural science courses as having been influential to theirviews of social responsibility (2%). A small percentage of students also responded that all oftheir courses had been influential (2%).Reflecting on the

Conference Session

Non-Canonical Canons of Engineering Ethics

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Donna M Riley, Virginia Tech; Amy E. Slaton, Drexel University (Eng. & Eng. Tech.); Joseph R. Herkert, Arizona State University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Engineering Ethics, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering

historical actors clearly understood theirefforts along these lines, we want to suggest that from another perspective the division betweendescriptive and prescriptive efforts may be somewhat blurrier. Responsible dam engineerswould no doubt heed the ethical mandate for public safety, health and welfare, which mandatepresupposes the possible co-existence of dam and safe public. Any dam is projected as comingabout either through safe or unsafe engineering practices, and in a non-trivial sense this isprecisely how dams come to be. Yet, consider that both the safe and the unsafe dam exclude thefreely flowing river from reasonable existence. That engineering codes of ethics have never, toour knowledge, included instructions to “reflect on who benefits

Conference Session

Interactive Panel on Improving the Experiences of Marginalized Students on Engineering Design Teams

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Lorelle A Meadows, Michigan Technological University; Denise Sekaquaptewa, University of Michigan; Marie C Paretti, Virginia Tech; Alice L. Pawley, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Shawn S. Jordan, Arizona State University, Polytechnic campus; Debbie Chachra, Olin College of Engineering; Adrienne Minerick, Michigan Technological University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education, Electrical and Computer, Engineering Libraries, First-Year Programs, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Minorities in Engineering, Student, Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering, Women in Engineering

distinct from sex. Connellnotes that gender is not a supposedly biologically-obvious division between men and women, butinstead the way human society collectively makes relevant these reproductive distinctions Page 26.1007.5between human bodies in a social context. For us, the context is engineering education. In its  simplest form, gender reflects the set of characteristics, behaviors, and practices that we think ofas “feminine” or “masculine” – characteristics that any individual biological male or female mayor may not embody.Race, like gender, is not a biological category but a social one. And unlike sex, race has nobiological basis, despite a

Conference Session

Communication Across the Divisions II: Communication and Transdisciplinary Pedagogies

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mark Valenzuela P.E., University of Evansville; Valerie A. Stein, University of Evansville

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Civil Engineering, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Mechanical Engineering, Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering

lectureAlthough the first author was mindful that the FYS audience drew from all of the majors acrosscampus (liberal arts and non-liberal arts) and needed to address the nature and value of criticalthinking, the choice of the subject matter and its treatment reflected the usual direction of theconversation about the discipline of the liberal arts in engineering. As a case study of theapplication of critical thinking, the lecture delves into conspiracy theories regarding the collapseof the World Trade Center Towers on 9-11. The opportunity to prepare for the plenary lecturegave the first author the motivation to seriously consider the efforts by a handful of engineersand architects to reopen the investigation of the collapse as part of the 9-11 Truth

Conference Session

Research on Diversification & Inclusion

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Michael Lachney, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Dean Nieusma, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

K-12 & Pre-College Engineering, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, New Engineering Educators, Student, Women in Engineering

approach reflects a foundationalmisalignment in educational philosophies resulting in what might provocatively be characterizedas “bait-and-switch.” The bait-and-switch characterization reflects a mismatch between theengagement logics embedded in most K-12 engineering education and the exclusionary logicsunderlying most university engineering education. While we acknowledge from the start thatuniversity engineering programs are increasingly emphasizing student engagement, the rapidexpansion of K-12 engineering programs has outpaced reforms in higher education aroundengagement, thereby magnifying the problems associated with engineering bait-and-switchexplored in this paper.In popular vernacular, bait-and-switch is often associated with fraud or

Conference Session

Communication Across the Divisions I: Communication in Engineering Disciplines

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Susan Conrad, Portland State University; William A. Kitch, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; Timothy James Pfeiffer P.E., Foundation Engineering, Inc.; Tori Rhoulac Smith, Howard University; John V. Tocco J.D., Lawrence Technological University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Civil Engineering, Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Evaluation of Effectiveness. Engineering practitioners rate a sample of student papers using a simple 1 to 5 scale from “not effective” to “effective” - or, as translated by one practitioner, from “horrible” to “hire this person!” They are given basic information about the task and asked to evaluate based on what they know to be effective writing in workplace practice. Scores for pre- and post-intervention papers are compared statistically with Mann-Whitney U or Wilcoxon Matched Pairs tests. 4. Perceptions of Usefulness. Students are asked to complete a short survey about their perceptions of their learning and the materials’ usefulness, or – if instructors prefer – to write open-ended reflections on their learning. The survey