Incorporation of Liberal Education into the Engineering Curriculum at a Polytechnic

Presented at the 2016 ASEE Annual Conference in New Orleans, LA. 27 June 2016

Transcript

1. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ Incorporation of Liberal Education into the Engineering Curriculum at a Polytechnic Devin R. Berg1 and Tina Lee2 1Engineering & Technology Department 2Social Science Department University of Wisconsin – Stout 27 June 2016 Twitter: @devinberg, #ASEEAnnual, #M434B
2. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ Slides available online! https://speakerdeck.com/devinberg
3. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ Traditional engineering curriculum can fail to provide skills for a global profession. • Curriculum guided by accreditation requirements. • Industry claims to want globally aware engineers but also increased focus on technical rigor. • Constraints of university budgets.
4. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ The engineering profession must adapt, and so to must engineering education. “As the world becomes more complex and interrelated, so do the problems engineers face. The engineering profession and individual engineers need to adapt or else risk getting lost in these global changes, thus abandoning our social responsibilities.” – Chan and Fishbein, 2009
5. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ Integrate ethics, social justice, and social responsibility into the engineering core. • Reduce silo’d curriculum. • Challenge of internal competition for student credit hours. • Challenge of student/faculty culture.
6. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ A new course, “Impacts of Engineering,” attempts to integrate liberal ed. from day 1. “A comprehensive study of the engineering design process from initiation to completion. Definition and history of engineering disciplines with comparisons among them. Investigation and exploration of past and present impacts of engineering on people, society, and the environment. Examination of contemporary and emerging issues related to engineering. Introduction to engineering in practice through engineering design projects.” – Impacts of Engineering course description
7. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ Course objectives incorporate liberal education themes. Successful completion of the course will enable students to: 1. Demonstrate an understanding of the historical philosophy of engineering and identify the effects of engineering design decisions throughout history. 2. Describe the various engineering disciplines and the differences between them. 3. Demonstrate an understanding of the comprehensive nature of engineering design. 4. Develop a systems perspective regarding the context of engineering design on a global scale. 5. Evaluate the ethical, social, economic, and environmental impacts of engineering during the design, production, and end user phase of a product’s life from multiple perspectives. 6. Synthesize ethically, socially, and environmentally conscious design judgments and decisions. 7. Evaluate trends and future impacts of environmental and social consciousness and globalization on engineering design and manufacturing from multiple perspectives. 8. Demonstrate an experiential understanding of engineering design impacts relevant to the various engineering disciplines. 9. Apply basic calculation procedures and computational tools used in engineering. 10. Apply the engineering design process and employ it to solve real-world issues.
8. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ Introducing broad global perspectives through comprehensive engineering design. • A semester long design project tied closely to course curriculum. • Infusion of diversity through group construction and project selection.
9. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ The outcomes of the project go to benefit youth in Liberia.
10. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ Students had to investigate how their product would be produced.
11. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ Students analysis the features of their designs.
12. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ Student designs varied significantly.
13. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ Students reported learning about impact on communities and positive role engineers can have in the world. “I have learned to think a lot more broadly about my design decisions. This class put into perspective the effects your decisions can have on society. Therefore, there is a lot more thought that has to go into decisions than I originally thought.”
14. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ Another example project for electric generation in Malawi.
15. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ Students design turbine rotors and evaluated performance.
16. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ Future directions. • Developing a new course and minor program in “Global Engineering” as a partnership between the disciplines of engineering, social science, and ethics. • Integrating more directly throughout the curriculum in Mechanical Engineering.
17. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the UW-Stout Impacts of Engineering students for their photographic and textual contributions and Joshua Herron for assistance with qualitative data processing. This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. EEC-1540301. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
18. ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Inspiring Innovation Learn more at www.uwstout.edu/et/ Thank you for your time!