The Multiplicity of Care in Engineering Education and Program Building

Marie Stettler Kleine; Elizabeth Reddy; Jessica Smith

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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: LEES Session 8: Care and Commitments
Page Count: 12
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--41530
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/41530
Download Count: 302

Paper Authors

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Marie Stettler Kleine Colorado School of Mines

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Marie Stettler Kleine is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering, Design, & Society. She conducts research on engineering practice and pedagogy, exploring its origins, purposes, and potential futures. Marie is especially interested in the roles of values in engineers’ pursuit to “do good.”

Marie received her B.S. in mechanical engineering and international studies from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and M.S. and PhD in science and technology studies (STS) from Virginia Tech. She also earned a graduate certificate in human-centered design (HCD) from the Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Program at Virginia Tech.

Marie’s interest in values and engagement in professional cultures also extends to innovation and its experts. With Matthew Wisnioski and Eric Hintz, Marie co-edited Does America Need More Innovators? (MIT Press, 2019). This project engages innovation’s champions, critics, and reformers in critical participation.

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Elizabeth Reddy Colorado School of Mines

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Anthropologist and STS scholar studying how we build engineering values, practices, and risk mitigation tech

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Jessica Smith Colorado School of Mines

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Jessica M. Smith is Professor in the Engineering, Design & Society Department at the Colorado School of Mines and Director of the Humanitarian Engineering and Science graduate program. She is an anthropologist with two major research areas: 1) the sociocultural dynamics of extractive and energy industries, with a focus on corporate social responsibility, social justice, labor, and gender and 2) engineering education, with a focus on socioeconomic class and social responsibility. She is the author of Extracting Accountability: Engineers and Corporate Social Responsibility (MIT Press, 2021) and Mining Coal and Undermining Gender: Rhythms of Work and Family in the American West (Rutgers University Press, 2014), which were funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the British Academy. In 2016 the National Academy of Engineering recognized her Corporate Social Responsibility course as a national exemplar in teaching engineering ethics. Professor Smith holds a PhD in Anthropology and a certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of Michigan and bachelor’s degrees in International Studies, Anthropology and Latin American Studies from Macalester College.

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Abstract

Care is a key framework for discussion and action in promise engineering education practices. While engineering codes of ethics do not necessarily mobilize care, as Warford notes, that does not make care unimportant: “The absence of care from the most visible normative value statements in the profession... is problematic“ (2018). Indeed, care is increasingly visible in engineering education scholarship. Even as it emerges as an important mode of discussion and action, care is an unstable category and mobilized to mean different things in different contexts.

In this paper, we provide an overview of the ways that the concept of “care” is mobilized within the engineering education community and offer potential framings for new alternatives that push us to think of care beyond those forms of individual awareness and response that attention to empathy encourages. We turn to scholars of education to help us define empathy as it is used in our community. The individualized form of awareness and response associated with empathy can be important to care but too frequently overdetermines our conversations. In this paper, we analyze different forms of care discussed in engineering education literature, with special attention to the ways that it has historically centered empathy, and consider the implications of this move for ways we have often discussed care recipients, what counts as care, and who cares. By considering these issues systematically, particularly by highlighting who gives and receives care-as-empathy, we surface the assumptions built into some of engineering education’s most important promises.

For all that putting care front and center in engineering and engineering education seems potentially productive, addressing it systematically as we do here allows us to reflect critically on the framework and expose some tensions and troubles. First, faculty, often those socialized as women, end up doing work in the name of “care” that does not count towards traditional tenure and promotion metrics. But, at the same time, focusing on this narrowed perspective of care work makes us unable to understand other forms that circulate in our community–especially our students’ care for us and each other. Care is neither easy nor straightforward; in this paper, we offer an account for what engineering educators are doing when they do care. These roles draw our attention to the utility of critical scholarship of care. We frame provocations in order to help our engineering education community think and work more carefully.

Citation
Format

Stettler Kleine, M., & Reddy, E., & Smith, J. (2022, August), The Multiplicity of Care in Engineering Education and Program Building Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41530

TY - CPAPER
AB - Care is a key framework for discussion and action in promise engineering education practices. While engineering codes of ethics do not necessarily mobilize care, as Warford notes, that does not make care unimportant: “The absence of care from the most visible normative value statements in the profession... is problematic“ (2018). Indeed, care is increasingly visible in engineering education scholarship. Even as it emerges as an important mode of discussion and action, care is an unstable category and mobilized to mean different things in different contexts.

In this paper, we provide an overview of the ways that the concept of “care” is mobilized within the engineering education community and offer potential framings for new alternatives that push us to think of care beyond those forms of individual awareness and response that attention to empathy encourages. We turn to scholars of education to help us define empathy as it is used in our community. The individualized form of awareness and response associated with empathy can be important to care but too frequently overdetermines our conversations. In this paper, we analyze different forms of care discussed in engineering education literature, with special attention to the ways that it has historically centered empathy, and consider the implications of this move for ways we have often discussed care recipients, what counts as care, and who cares. By considering these issues systematically, particularly by highlighting who gives and receives care-as-empathy, we surface the assumptions built into some of engineering education’s most important promises.

For all that putting care front and center in engineering and engineering education seems potentially productive, addressing it systematically as we do here allows us to reflect critically on the framework and expose some tensions and troubles. First, faculty, often those socialized as women, end up doing work in the name of “care” that does not count towards traditional tenure and promotion metrics. But, at the same time, focusing on this narrowed perspective of care work makes us unable to understand other forms that circulate in our community–especially our students’ care for us and each other. Care is neither easy nor straightforward; in this paper, we offer an account for what engineering educators are doing when they do care. These roles draw our attention to the utility of critical scholarship of care. We frame provocations in order to help our engineering education community think and work more carefully.

AU - Marie Stettler Kleine
AU - Elizabeth Reddy
AU - Jessica Smith
CY - Minneapolis, MN
DA - 2022/08/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - The Multiplicity of Care in Engineering Education and Program Building
UR - https://peer.asee.org/41530
DO - 10.18260/1-2--41530
ER -