Infusing the Liberal Arts in First-Year Engineering: A Module on History, Professional Identity, and Courage

Melissa C Kenny; Olga Pierrakos; Monique O'Connell

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Conference: 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
Location: Virtual Conference
Publication Date: July 26, 2021
Start Date: July 26, 2021
End Date: July 19, 2022
Conference Session: Sociotechnical Thinking II: Interpretation, Curricular Practices, and Structural Change
Tagged Division: Liberal Education/Engineering & Society
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 20
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--37336
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/37336
Download Count: 401

Paper Authors

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Melissa C Kenny Wake Forest University orcid.org/0000-0002-6824-9377

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Dr. Melissa C Kenny is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the new Department of Engineering at Wake Forest University. Her scholarly interests include biomimetic engineering, biomechanics, and engineering education, particularly the first-year engineering experience and liberal arts-infused engineering education. She holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Virginia Tech and a BS in Biological Engineering from Cornell University. She joined the faculty at Wake Forest in 2019.

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Olga Pierrakos Wake Forest University

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Dr. Olga Pierrakos is Founding Chair and Professor of the new Department of Engineering at Wake Forest University - a private, liberal arts, research institution. As one of the newest engineering programs in the nation, she is facilitating the realization of building an innovative program aligned with the university mission of Pro Humanitate (For Humanity) and well-integrated within the liberal arts tradition. Her vision is to educate the whole person and the whole engineer with fearlessness and virtuous character. She is the PI on the Kern Family Foundation award to infuse character education across the WFU Engineering curriculum in partnership with the WFU Program for Leadership and Character and many colleagues across the university. With inclusion being a core value, she is proud that the WFU Engineering team represents 60% female engineering faculty and 40% female students, plus 20% of students from ethnic minority groups. Her areas of expertise include engineering identity, complex problem solving across cognitive and non-cognitive domains, recruitment and retention, PBL, engineering design, learning through service, character education in engineering contexts, etc. She also conducts research in cardiovascular fluid mechanics and sustainable energy technologies. Prior to joining Wake Forest University, Olga served as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation in the Division of Undergraduate Education and founding faculty of the Department of Engineering at James Madison University. She holds a BS and MS in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Tech, and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the joint program between Virginia Tech and Wake Forest University.

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Monique O'Connell Wake Forest University

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Monique O’Connell is a Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Wake Forest University. Her scholarly work focuses on the history of Renaissance Venice and its empire, a topic that has taken her into the details of economic exchange, early print culture, political communication, classicizing rhetoric, clerical conspiracies, and the history of botany. She earned her undergraduate degree at Brown University (1996), her masters and Ph,D at Northwestern (1999, 2002) and did a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University before joining the faculty at Wake Forest in 2004.

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Abstract

The global workplace and professional practice require engineers to tackle complex problems and decisions by functioning effectively on multidisciplinary teams, weighing factors across social and political considerations (along with technical facets), communicating with diverse stakeholders, and requiring a lifelong learning approach to every project. Grounded in a rich liberal arts tradition, Wake Forest University (WFU) launched a new engineering program in 2017 with a strong commitment to this practice of authentically integrating engineering fundamental knowledge to rich liberal arts knowledge. Together, we believe this combination of knowledge leads to better engineers. After all, four out of the seven ABET Student Outcomes that every accredited program must meet is inherently connected to liberal arts knowledge. In this paper, we describe a semester-long module within one of our required, first-year engineering courses that was co-designed by an interdisciplinary team to embody this strong liberal arts tradition. In this first year WFU Engineering course, students are introduced to the study and practice of engineering with an emphasis on the human-centered design process. Within this course, a semester-long module called “What is Engineering?” showcases (1) the intersection of history and engineering to emphasize global and societal contexts, (2) foundational knowledge to support the development of one’s engineer identity (with historical contexts and engineer exemplars), and (3) the importance of courage as a virtue that is foundational to the practice of engineering. Within this module, which has been under development the past four years, engineering, history, philosophy, and professional identity come to life. Engaging lectures are followed by interactive learning activities and engaging assignments outside of class solidify the learning and students’ understanding of key concepts. The driving motivation for this module, developmental approach to the learning activities, and lessons learned are described in this paper. The paper offers the potential to serve as a framework for development of similar collaborations between engineering and humanities, including an emphasis on character virtues within first-year engineering courses and how scalable projects like this are beyond a single course.

Citation
Format

Kenny, M. C., & Pierrakos, O., & O'Connell, M. (2021, July), Infusing the Liberal Arts in First-Year Engineering: A Module on History, Professional Identity, and Courage Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--37336

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - The global workplace and professional practice require engineers to tackle complex problems and decisions by functioning effectively on multidisciplinary teams, weighing factors across social and political considerations (along with technical facets), communicating with diverse stakeholders, and requiring a lifelong learning approach to every project. Grounded in a rich liberal arts tradition, Wake Forest University (WFU) launched a new engineering program in 2017 with a strong commitment to this practice of authentically integrating engineering fundamental knowledge to rich liberal arts knowledge. Together, we believe this combination of knowledge leads to better engineers. After all, four out of the seven ABET Student Outcomes that every accredited program must meet is inherently connected to liberal arts knowledge. In this paper, we describe a semester-long module within one of our required, first-year engineering courses that was co-designed by an interdisciplinary team to embody this strong liberal arts tradition. In this first year WFU Engineering course, students are introduced to the study and practice of engineering with an emphasis on the human-centered design process. Within this course, a semester-long module called “What is Engineering?” showcases (1) the intersection of history and engineering to emphasize global and societal contexts, (2) foundational knowledge to support the development of one’s engineer identity (with historical contexts and engineer exemplars), and (3) the importance of courage as a virtue that is foundational to the practice of engineering. Within this module, which has been under development the past four years, engineering, history, philosophy, and professional identity come to life. Engaging lectures are followed by interactive learning activities and engaging assignments outside of class solidify the learning and students’ understanding of key concepts. The driving motivation for this module, developmental approach to the learning activities, and lessons learned are described in this paper. The paper offers the potential to serve as a framework for development of similar collaborations between engineering and humanities, including an emphasis on character virtues within first-year engineering courses and how scalable projects like this are beyond a single course. 
AU  - Melissa C Kenny
AU  - Olga Pierrakos
AU  - Monique O'Connell
CY  - Virtual Conference
DA  - 2021/07/26
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Infusing the Liberal Arts in First-Year Engineering: A Module on History, Professional Identity, and Courage
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/37336
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--37336
ER  -