Environmentally and Socially Responsible Engineering - Assessing Student Empowerment

Natasha Andrade; Elisabeth Smela; Vincent Nguyen; David Bigio; Adjoa Egyen-Davis; Daniela Nganjo

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Conference: 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Start Date: June 26, 2022
End Date: June 29, 2022
Conference Session: Broadening Participation and Inclusion in STEM: Equity, Culture & Social Justice in Education Division Technical Session 8
Page Count: 12
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--41569
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/41569
Download Count: 212

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Paper Authors

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Natasha Andrade University of Maryland College Park

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Senior Lecturer

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Elisabeth Smela University of Maryland College Park

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Prof. of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland

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Vincent Nguyen University of Maryland College Park

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Vincent P. Nguyen is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP). He received his B.S., M.S., and PhD. in mechanical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park. He is a founding member of the Environmental and Socially Responsible Engineering (ESRE) group who work to integrate and track conscientious engineering aspects throughout the undergraduate educational experience. His efforts include formally integrating sustainability design requirements into the mechanical engineering capstone projects, introducing non-profit partnerships related to designs for persons with disabilities, and founding the Social/Environmental Design Impact Award. He manages several outreach and diversity efforts including the large-scale Get Out And Learn (GOAL) engineering kit program that reaches thousands of local K-12 students. He has received the Volunteers for Medical Engineering (VME) 2020 Faculty of the Year award, Engineering for US All (e4usa) 2021 Most Outstanding University Partner Award, and the VME 2021 Volunteer of the Year award.

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Abstract

It is well established that within most of the engineering curriculum, social and environmental aspects of design and technology can be overlooked. Engineering design that lacks social and environmental considerations likely leads to instances where social injustices are perpetuated. To break down this systematic inadequate engineering education within our large public institution and to change the culture among our students, a team of four instructors and several undergraduate students have been working on educating undergraduate engineering students who are empowered and skilled enough to take head-on the global challenges that we are facing, with a heavy focus on changing courses in the curriculum to include more socially and environmentally conscious design and thinking. To achieve real change in all our undergraduate students, we introduced course modifications to required courses for civil and environmental engineers and mechanical engineers. We also have established a capstone follow-up course that aims to enroll students from several different departments, providing engineering students with an interdisciplinary design approach. There are two main thrusts which we plan to forward in this project – 1) introduction of environmentally and socially responsible concepts into the engineering curriculum through required courses; and 2) assessing several metrics that have been developed and implemented to track the student culture toward environmentally or socially responsible engineering. In this WIP paper, we will focus on the latter. The developed metrics will be utilized for pre and post-assessments of curricular changes and can be used to continuously track effectiveness. A survey instrument has been distributed to 1st year, 3rd year, and 4th year students every semester since Fall 2020. Though the team used the current survey literature to develop our survey questions, we tried to create questions that would measure how empowered students are to make important changes, not only how they feel, but if they have actually made active changes for the better. We also wanted to understand if the students’ engineering identity would shift after the introduction of the new content. So far, we have collected background quantitative and qualitative survey data, which will be discussed in this paper. Survey metrics are informative but are prompted and rely on self-assessment, which may bias toward positive responses. Additional novel metrics were implemented to measure student culture. Among these is a response to assignment prompts related to identifying characteristics of successful professional engineers. Initial results show high recognition of environmental and social responsibility when prompted, but room for improvement in terms of self-identifying these responsibilities as fundamental to the definition of professional engineering.

Citation
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Andrade, N., & Smela, E., & Nguyen, V., & Bigio, D., & Egyen-Davis, A., & Nganjo, D. (2022, August), Environmentally and Socially Responsible Engineering - Assessing Student Empowerment Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41569

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - It is well established that within most of the engineering curriculum, social and environmental aspects of design and technology can be overlooked. Engineering design that lacks social and environmental considerations likely leads to instances where social injustices are perpetuated. To break down this systematic inadequate engineering education within our large public institution and to change the culture among our students, a team of four instructors and several undergraduate students have been working on educating undergraduate engineering students who are empowered and skilled enough to take head-on the global challenges that we are facing, with a heavy focus on changing courses in the curriculum to include more socially and environmentally conscious design and thinking. To achieve real change in all our undergraduate students, we introduced course modifications to required courses for civil and environmental engineers and mechanical engineers. We also have established a capstone follow-up course that aims to enroll students from several different departments, providing engineering students with an interdisciplinary design approach. There are two main thrusts which we plan to forward in this project – 1) introduction of environmentally and socially responsible concepts into the engineering curriculum through required courses; and 2) assessing several metrics that have been developed and implemented to track the student culture toward environmentally or socially responsible engineering. In this WIP paper, we will focus on the latter. The developed metrics will be utilized for pre and post-assessments of curricular changes and can be used to continuously track effectiveness. A survey instrument has been distributed to 1st year, 3rd year, and 4th year students every semester since Fall 2020. Though the team used the current survey literature to develop our survey questions, we tried to create questions that would measure how empowered students are to make important changes, not only how they feel, but if they have actually made active changes for the better. We also wanted to understand if the students’ engineering identity would shift after the introduction of the new content. So far, we have collected background quantitative and qualitative survey data, which will be discussed in this paper. Survey metrics are informative but are prompted and rely on self-assessment, which may bias toward positive responses. Additional novel metrics were implemented to measure student culture. Among these is a response to assignment prompts related to identifying characteristics of successful professional engineers. Initial results show high recognition of environmental and social responsibility when prompted, but room for improvement in terms of self-identifying these responsibilities as fundamental to the definition of professional engineering.

AU  - Natasha Andrade
AU  - Elisabeth Smela
AU  - Vincent Nguyen
AU  - David Bigio
AU  - Adjoa Egyen-Davis
AU  - Daniela Nganjo
CY  - Minneapolis, MN
DA  - 2022/08/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Environmentally and Socially Responsible Engineering - Assessing Student Empowerment
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/41569
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--41569
ER  -