Incorporating Design Justice Activities in Engineering Courses

Shuvra Das

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Conference: 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Baltimore , Maryland
Publication Date: June 25, 2023
Start Date: June 25, 2023
End Date: June 28, 2023
Conference Session: Multidisciplinary Engineering Division (MULTI) Technical Session 10
Tagged Division: Multidisciplinary Engineering Division (MULTI)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 13
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--43636
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/43636
Download Count: 145

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Paper Authors

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Shuvra Das University of Detroit, Mercy orcid.org/0000-0003-0082-9102

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Shuvra Das has been working at University of Detroit Mercy since January 1994 and is currently Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Over this time, he served in a variety of administrative roles such as Mechanical Engineering Department Chair, Associate Dean for Research and Outreach, and Director of International Programs in the college of Engineering and Science. He has an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and Master’s and Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from Iowa State University. He was a post-doctoral researcher at University of Notre Dame and worked in industry for several years prior to joining Detroit Mercy.

Dr. Das has taught a variety of courses ranging from freshmen to advanced graduate level such as Mechanics of Materials, Introductory and Advanced Finite Element Method, Engineering Design, Introduction to Mechatronics, Mechatronic Modeling and Simulation, Mathematics for Engineers, Electric Drives and Electromechanical Energy Conversion. He led the effort in the college to start several successful programs: a graduate concentration in Mechatronics, an undergraduate major in Robotics and Mechatronic Systems Engineering, a graduate certificate in Advanced Electric Vehicles, and thriving partnerships for student exchange with several universities in China.

Dr. Das received many awards for teaching and research at Detroit Mercy as well as from organizations outside the university. His areas of research interest are modeling and simulation of multi-disciplinary engineering problems, engineering education, and curriculum reform. He has worked in areas ranging from mechatronics system simulation to multi-physics process simulation using CAE tools such as Finite Elements and Boundary Elements. He has authored or co-authored six published books on these topics.

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Abstract

One of the primary tasks that engineers have to undertake is design. Engineers design and develop solutions that are supposed to satisfy human needs. Engineers also, through their work, intend to change the life of everyone for the better. While all around us we see numerous examples of cases/design solutions that have improved our lives, there is also another side of this story. For example, development of nuclear weapons during the second world war led to its use to destroy cities and innocent lives, and a perpetual threat of the possibility of nuclear holocaust. Or, for example, how early in the US history the growth of the country from its coastal colonies into the heartland was achieved through the development of the railroad. These same railroad projects ended up destroying the lives and livelihood of the indigenous people.

Even today when we are designing solutions, we quite often do not consider the possibilities of the harms that it may cause and we often exclude the voices of the very people who are affected by our design. The Design Justice movement is a network of design practitioners, design instructors and others from a variety of different backgrounds who want to change the design landscape into a more inclusive ecosystem [1,2]

Research shows [3], while typical engineering programs have plenty of design content, the concepts of design justice are rarely taught. This paper talks about the experiences of introducing some of the concepts of design justice into a number of undergraduate courses. It was done through a case study of a section of an interstate that was built in the 1950s cutting across a thriving neighborhood that was eventually decimated. This case has been in recent news, since federal government money is being used to revive parts of the neighborhood. In the assignment students were asked to review this case through the lens of deign justice using the principles of design justice[2]. Also, they are then assigned to pick a design situation that they are familiar with and use the same set of guiding principles to analyze their chosen example. The results learned from this assignment will be reported in this paper.

References

1. https://designjustice.org 2. https://designjustice.org/read-the-principles 3. Madhurima Das, Anastasia K. Ostrowski, et.al., “Auditing design justice: The impact of social movements on design pedagogy at a technology institution,” 13th Design Thinking Research Symposium, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, March 22-24, 2022

Citation
Format

Das, S. (2023, June), Incorporating Design Justice Activities in Engineering Courses Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43636

TY - CPAPER
AB - One of the primary tasks that engineers have to undertake is design. Engineers design and develop solutions that are supposed to satisfy human needs. Engineers also, through their work, intend to change the life of everyone for the better. While all around us we see numerous examples of cases/design solutions that have improved our lives, there is also another side of this story. For example, development of nuclear weapons during the second world war led to its use to destroy cities and innocent lives, and a perpetual threat of the possibility of nuclear holocaust. Or, for example, how early in the US history the growth of the country from its coastal colonies into the heartland was achieved through the development of the railroad. These same railroad projects ended up destroying the lives and livelihood of the indigenous people.

Even today when we are designing solutions, we quite often do not consider the possibilities of the harms that it may cause and we often exclude the voices of the very people who are affected by our design. The Design Justice movement is a network of design practitioners, design instructors and others from a variety of different backgrounds who want to change the design landscape into a more inclusive ecosystem [1,2]

Research shows [3], while typical engineering programs have plenty of design content, the concepts of design justice are rarely taught. This paper talks about the experiences of introducing some of the concepts of design justice into a number of undergraduate courses. It was done through a case study of a section of an interstate that was built in the 1950s cutting across a thriving neighborhood that was eventually decimated. This case has been in recent news, since federal government money is being used to revive parts of the neighborhood. In the assignment students were asked to review this case through the lens of deign justice using the principles of design justice[2]. Also, they are then assigned to pick a design situation that they are familiar with and use the same set of guiding principles to analyze their chosen example. The results learned from this assignment will be reported in this paper.

References

1. https://designjustice.org
2. https://designjustice.org/read-the-principles
3. Madhurima Das, Anastasia K. Ostrowski, et.al., “Auditing design justice: The impact of social movements on design pedagogy at a technology institution,” 13th Design Thinking Research Symposium, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, March 22-24, 2022

AU - Shuvra Das
CY - Baltimore , Maryland
DA - 2023/06/25
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Incorporating Design Justice Activities in Engineering Courses
UR - https://peer.asee.org/43636
DO - 10.18260/1-2--43636
ER -