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Vertical Integration of the Liberal Arts in Engineering Education

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Conference

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

New Orleans, Louisiana

Publication Date

June 26, 2016

Start Date

June 26, 2016

End Date

June 29, 2016

ISBN

978-0-692-68565-5

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Works in Progress: Curricula and Pathways

Tagged Division

Educational Research and Methods

Page Count

10

DOI

10.18260/p.27179

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/27179

Download Count

525

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Paper Authors

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Bingbing Li California State University - Northridge Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-6140-4189

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Dr. Bingbing Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Manufacturing Systems Engineering & Management at California State University Northridge. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Manufacturing Systems Engineering. His research includes additive manufacturing (laser additive manufacturing, 3D bioprinting, FDM & SLA for plastics), sustainable design and manufacturing, and sustainability analysis of nanotechnologies.

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Robert G. Ryan California State University - Northridge

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Dr. Ryan is the Associate Dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science at California State University, Northridge, and is also a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He is a long-time ASME Student Section Advisor, and has several years of experience teaching the ME capstone design course. His main technical areas of expertise are in heat transfer and fluid mechanics.

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Nancy Warter-Perez California State University - Los Angeles

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Nancy Warter-Perez is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at California State University, Los Angeles.

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Yong Gan Cal Poly Pomona

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Dr. Yong X. Gan, joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at California State Polytechnic University-Pomona as Associate Professor in September 2012. He received his undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering in 1984 from Hunan University, Changsha, P.R. China. He received his MS and D.Eng. in Materials Science and Engineering from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Beihang University), Beijing, P.R. China in 1987 and 1992, respectively. He received his M.Phil. in 2004 and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 2005, both from Columbia University. His major teaching and research activities are on advanced manufacturing, materials processing, microstructure and property characterization. He is a registered Professional Engineer (P.E.) in the State of Alabama, USA.

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Hadil Mustafa California State University - Chico

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Helen Cox Institute for Sustainability, California State University - Northridge

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Dr. Cox has a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of California, Los Angeles, an M.S. from the University of Pennsylvania in Computer Science and M.A., B.A. in Physics from Oxford University. She is a Professor in the Geography department at California State University, Northridge, where she teaches and conducts research related to the atmosphere, weather monitoring, remote sensing, climate change, GIS and environmental geography. For the past six years she has been the Director of the Institute for Sustainability at CSUN. In this capacity she develops and promotes educational and research programs related to sustainability; coordinates and assists in the implementation of greening efforts for the campus; and participates in campus planning for sustainability. She is actively involved in programs and education surrounding renewable energy, climate action planning, and climate adaptation and resilience.

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Li Ding California State University - Northridge

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Dr. Li Ding is a Lecturer in the Department of Manufacturing Systems Engineering and Management at California State University Northridge.

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Abstract

Vertical Integration of the Liberal Arts in Engineering Education

Abstract:

Engineers are charged with creating, developing and implementing technological solutions to contemporary challenges, and innovating solutions for tomorrow’s. Yet, engineering training is primarily focused on comprehension of the mathematical, physical and sometimes, chemical equations governing the behavior of systems and their components and applications of these, often with little attention to humanistic inquiry. This can lead to engineers who are not trained to think critically about human and social dimensions of challenges nor integrate them fully in decision making. The Teagle Foundation funded us through their “Liberal Arts in the Professions” program, in which liberal arts education will be embedded into the curriculum of undergraduates preparing for the professions. Under this proposal faculty at XXX worked with their counterparts at XXX to develop a suite of measures to integrate liberal arts teaching into the undergraduate engineering curriculum.

The objectives of our educational research are as follows: 1) Faculty from engineering and faculty from the social sciences and humanities shall develop strong working relationships and together implement and evaluate strategies for working across disciplines. 2) Students of engineering and their counterparts in the liberal arts and humanities shall engage in peer-to-peer learning and work together to solve problems. 3) Liberal arts and humanities content will be better integrated into the engineering curriculum. 4) Engineering students will understand the value and relevance of their General Education. 5) The engineering programs will be better positioned to assess their performances on the “soft skills” ABET outcomes (above) and improve these performances. We plan to accomplish the objectives of this initiative through the following strategies: 1) Establish Faculty Learning Communities (FLC) within each campus, comprising approximately 12 faculty in total taken from engineering and a number of different disciplines within the humanities. 2) Utilize and expand existing G.E. Paths to meet the needs of engineering students and the goals of this program. 3) Create new minor in Urban Sustainability/Citizenship/Engaged Citizen and incentivize engineering students to take it through advisement. 4) Identify engineering courses with potential for liberal arts integration and adopt a variety of strategies (team teaching, FLC development, online modules) for accomplishing this. 5) Develop new courses for engineers that integrate liberal arts using FLCs.

Keywords: Liberral arts, engineering education, faculty learning communities, general engineering paths, sustainability

Li, B., & Ryan, R. G., & Warter-Perez, N., & Gan, Y., & Mustafa, H., & Cox, H., & Ding, L. (2016, June), Vertical Integration of the Liberal Arts in Engineering Education Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.27179

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2016 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015