The Engineering Studies major itself emerged from an ongoing debate of science and technology vs the humanities. As mentioned in The Lafayette, “it will explore the nature and roles of engineering, the problem solving skills employed by engineers, and the socio-political issues involved in the direction and control of technology” (1970). This was the description of a course named “Foundations of Modern Engineering.” Unfortunately, the syllabus is most likely lost in history, but from the title and description, one can only assume the topics are focused on the politics of engineering and technology and how the rapid advancements of the time were questioned from automation in industrial settings to military engineering. Now, especially in a time where racial justice and environmental justice are at the forefront of political debates, why is it not at the forefront of our curriculum? There is a hole that needs to be filled for the Engineering Studies program to be current and successful in its teachings. Also, the questions of how engineering can be related to social and environmental justice must be asked in the beginning of the curriculum so students can constantly evaluate throughout their college experience. The politics involved in engineering should be everchanging with the current climate and woven into the curriculum seamlessly.
The politics that were the driving force when the Engineering Studies major was created were surrounding a boom in engineering that would almost too fast to evaluate and was determined by some as the driving force of society. This technological determinist viewpoint was met with much criticism. A response was met and described in Engineers for Change, when it mentions, “Humanistic engineering programs flourished at elite universities and a small group of liberal arts colleges whose faculty were drawn to the theories of technological politics” (Wisnioski, 2016, p. 165). This describes Lafayette exceptionally well and shows the reason for the emergence of the Engineering Studies Major. In comparison to the politics of today in technology, there are clearly missing pieces to our curriculum.
One of the missing pieces in the current Engineering Studies major is race and technology. There are plans to make the major more focused on how new technologies have an impact on race. The EGRS faculty plan to accomplish this by slowly introducing more courses, but one has been told to our team during our Senior Project course. Professor Cohen, who leads the course, specified that there will be a race and technology course offered in the near future. This Race and Technology course plans to focus on how technology isn’t a neutral entity and that technology’s creators can be biased. Professor Rossmann, a Mechanical Engineering Professor, a co-director of the Hanson Center of Inclusion and also sits on the Engineering Studies advisory board, is set to teach this course next couple years. The course will be cross listed between Engineering Studies and Africana Studies, open to students from both majors to learn more about algorithmic biases against marginalized communities (J.Rossmann, personal communication, October 25, 2020). Since we currently have no evaluation of the hypothetical Race and Technology course, we will evaluate the current state and need for a course of its nature in a manner of politics. The technological bias field has grown over the years with several studies and reports about their findings. In this field, Ruha Benjamin has explained several terms, one being the “New Jim Code”. Benjamin describes the New Jim Code in Race After Technology as the following: “Some algorithms are racist; We have a problem: Racist and sexist robots; Robotic racists: AI technologies could inherit their creators’ biases” (2019, p. 52). She came to this conclusion after mentioning a beauty contest going wrong after the AI judge clearly discriminated against those with darker skin. Benjamin continues explains the danger of algorithms in technology in this section and throughout her book. This is important as even though the civil rights movement created change during the 1960s with the Civil Rights Act, there must be an awareness that there are still effects on people of color today in engineering and technology.
This effect on people of color is manifested through algorithms whether in google searches, social media, police cameras, or many other places. Police systems today are focused on predictive policing where police use algorithms to focus their efforts on marginalized communities, further causing more potential for discrimination (Black Future Month, 2019). The issue is at least partially due to the whiteness in the tech industry, as black persons are underrepresented in this important technological implementation. This issue’s source can be found in the average engineering graduate program, as stated by Juan C. Lucena and Jon A Leydens. Lucena and Leydens indicate the following on inclusion and diversity opportunities in engineering programs: “Today’s typical engineering students graduate ill-equipped to properly frame and define engineering problems and solution spaces, to adequately identify the benefits and constraints of engineering, to holistically conceive of sustainability in their work, and to commit fully to dismantle power and privilege in an effort to foster diversity and inclusion.” (Lucena, Leydens, 2010, p. xix). In order to be able to address discrimination, the leaders who emerge from these engineering programs must understand their privilege and oppression’s chains on black folks in the technology sector. Instead of having black people involved in creating technologies, they become the targets for discrimination and further oppression whether it is the intention or not. Including more inclusivity could be crucial in including more black people in technology. If there are more black people involved in technology, they can help develop technologies that are not oppressive towards their own or any other communities.
There is hope as there are black leaders in technology who are pushing towards black people being more in the center in technologies. In a video presented on TBS on afrofuturism, tech leader Y-Vonne Hutchinson indicates that change can emerge by imagining black people in the center of technology (2019). The Black Lives Matter movement has caught headlines across the nation and the world, as the black community is calling out for major reform in policing. As described in the video, “Algorithmic bias means that all of our technology could be racist” (Black Future Month, 2019). We have seen this during the BLM protests, where police are using technologies like tear gas to separate protestors. This is only possible due to the lack of diversity and consideration by the engineers who created this technology, and laws being put into place that have allowed this action to be deemed legal. When it comes to politics and policy in our American history, black people have not been treated fairly. These algorithms are another mode of racism that is perpetuated into all of society. Lucena and Leyden put this best with the following: “Engineers and engineering societies have a heritage of concern for ethics and ethical issues. Yet in fulfilling its professional responsibilities, engineering has for too long neglected questions about social justice and sustainable community development.” (Engineering and Sustainable Community Development, 2010, p.170). When questions about social justice aren’t being answered then biased technologies continue to make it to the hands of those with power and authority. Engineers are bystanders, watching their unchecked technologies be used by unconsciously biased organizations.
An overarching theme of evaluating how race relations must play a part in the EGRS curriculum. One course can have an impact, but in order to have significant experiences throughout the major’s four years there must be reform in the program. In the program’s four year cycle, there is one required class that brings attention to race and technology. The course that brings up this idea is the Capstone course, Engineering and Society. In this class, students spent one week learning about race and technology in student led lessons. We, Kyle Blumenthal and Benny Molina, were the ones responsible for this unit as we prepared questions and activities to lead the class to our best ability. We established among our group that crime is predicted to be in black neighborhoods within algorithms. By the unit’s end, students recognized that algorithms are not neutral, and are inherently racist. However, we did not feel satisfied in how little time this topic was focused on through the jam-packed fourteen weeks of the senior project. In reflection of our Engineering Studies curriculum, we asked: why is this something we are not learning about until our senior year of the program? Being at the center of politics in our current climate, racism and technology should be implemented in much of the engineering curriculum in Acopian. The Lafayette College Engineering Studies website states “The curriculum empowers students to meet society’s current and emerging complex, multi-disciplinary challenges” (2020). How are Engineering Studies majors supposed to meet society’s challenges if they only spend a week with material that should be brought up throughout their entire college careers? The major lacks the social justice framework in order to create meaningful experiences that students can apply throughout their EGRS course experiences. Lucena and Leydens point out the role of social justice in the profession in the political context when it relates to engineers; “…Engineers are obligated to serve the public interest. To honor this commitment to public service, engineers should pay greater attention to social justice and sustainable community development.” (Engineering and Sustainable Community Development, 2010, p. 170). If Lafayette’s Engineering Studies program isn’t focusing on the social justice aspect, can the students truly serve their communities effectively? With a layer of the cake missing (EGRS Vision Cake), then Engineering Studies may have a difficult time addressing issues related to diversity as the experiences they receive related to social justice are outside of the major. The Engineering Studies program claims to bring in the liberal arts to create connections with engineering, but in order to do this in the most effective manner, one week in the final class most Engineering Studies majors cannot be the most in depth interaction they have with the real issues facing people of color.
The other part of the cake that needs attention by the Engineering Studies major is the environmental justice layer. Environmental justice has become heavily politicized over the last twenty years; the issue affects everyone, yet the issue is considered partisan. Three environmental investigators (Riley E. Dunlap, Aaron McCright, and Jerrod H. Yarosh) decided to investigate the history of partisanship when it comes to climate change. According to the three, “…Not only has the gap between Democrats’ and Republicans’ climate change beliefs increased over time, but the political moderator effect appears to be holding steady and shows no signs of subsiding.” (2016, p.19). This issue came into the mainstream during the 2000 election when then Vice President Al Gore decided to focus on climate change. This quickly set a precedent that followed Republicans and Democrats since and has defined the Presidencies of the 2010s. President Obama followed climate action reform by joining the Paris Climate Accord and set regulations to ensure the environment was protected. However, in President Donald Trump’s presidency, the United States removed themselves from all of these commitments, as predicted by Dunlap, McCright and Yarosh. They indicated the issue that we are currently facing in a Trump presidency, “Conversely, a Republican President, especially paired with a Republican- controlled Congress (and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court), might well take a huge step backward in our nation’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also undermine interna- tional cooperation to deal with climate change.” (2016, p.20).
Environmental Environmental ethics is the thought that comes to mind in the thought of environmental justice and politics. The argument of whether focusing on the protection of the natural environment of our planet, and if it is worth our time, money, and effort to fix the issues we have created as the human race. We as students are the ones who should be evaluating whether a new technology is ethical when it comes to the environment’s well being. As mentioned in an article from the Pew Research Center, “Political fissures on climate issues extend far beyond beliefs about whether climate change is occurring and whether humans are playing a role…These divisions reach across every dimension of the climate debate, down to people’s basic trust in the motivations that drive climate scientists to conduct their research” (2016). Just as in 2016, we just saw this in the current US Presidential election debates between Trump and Biden. One is a doubter of climate change and downplays any negative events that are an effect of our poor climate control. On the contrary, the latter supports scientists who show the effects of climate change and supports new methods of how the effects can be turned around. This bipartisan issue should not be bipartisan, but rather a joined effort to fix an issue that can affect anyone regardless of socioeconomic status or political party. Climate change should not be something that one person believes in and the next does not, it clearly needs to be understood on a deeper level of how to comprehend climate change, so everyone supports action against it. We, as students, must also have experiences of evaluating how climate change can affect us and also who it affects the most.
Engineering Studies majors should care about environmental justice, especially if they care about social justice as well. The biggest issue we see in environmental justice is environmental racism, especially when it comes to engineer’s roles. As defined by Green Action, “Environmental racism is the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color. Environmental justice is the movement’s response to environmental racism. Environmental racism shows the effects on how policy can impact the well being of marginalized groups. According to The Insider, “An estimated 70% of contaminated waste sites are located in low-income neighborhoods, and an upwards of 2 million Americans live within a mile of sites that are vulnerable to flooding — the majority of which are in Black and brown communities” (2020). Within the policy of our government, there has been action in place originating with redlining, that kept minorities and people of a lower socioeconomic status near these contaminated waste sites, near nuclear power plants, and other major impacts to a human’s health and the environment. I cannot recall a time where we deeply analyzed this in a course while in the Engineering Studies major. If there is a course within the Environmental Studies department that would fulfill this, then EGRS majors should be required to learn about these topics. Unfortunately, even with a course on the topic of environmental racism and environmental justice, it would need a focus on the engineering side of it. Perhaps delving into the effects of the contaminated waste sites, and what are ways to take better precautions to minimize these harmful effects. Why are the policies in place that make these great engineering feats of nuclear power plants typically being placed in areas of black and brown neighborhoods? We learn how the processes of major factories get built and how to manage the economics of it within our project management courses, but we do not analyze the politics of what happens when that factory is built. Policy certainly allows these facilities to be placed in certain communities, and we as EGRS majors should understand the details why that happens.
When it comes to the Engineering Studies major, Lafayette’s website explains that “Engineering happens in the real world, every day, all around us, and the challenges that face society require engineering solutions. This means the social, economic, managerial, and policy environments determine both what kind of problems are solved and how those solutions are put into place in society” (Lafayette Engineering Studies Program, 2020). With policy being referenced, and in reflection of only being required to take one policy course in the major, either policy should be taken out of the description, or this area must be bolstered. The Intro to Policy course certainly referenced issues surrounding policy and environmental issues, but the curriculum did not do the best at addressing racial justice in relation to environmental racism. The EGRS major was in reaction to the political conversation of the time of humanities vs engineers. It has been debated for over decades of whether certain advancements of technology are necessary. With that being said, and being part of the emergence of the Engineering Studies major, there is the debate of who shall make the decisions in engineering: the engineers or the humanitarians. Engineers will have a voice in these discussions, but it is important that the EGRS program prepare their own students for these conversations as without this layer, they will fall back into tendencies that caused the creation of the major in the first place.
When it comes to the overhaul of the curriculum, there will imminently be the debate on how topics of environmental justice and racial justice shall be included in our education in Acopian. As we have established so far in this report, there are differing opinions on the role environmental and social justice have in engineering. In the outside world, we can see that politicians are divided on how to best manage the environment. Within engineering itself, students and faculty debate on how to implement justice without removing the technical knowledge that defines the students as engineers. Engineering Studies will be participating in the world by working in their respective fields and that in itself is a huge opportunity to change the status quo. The very political world we have that divides engineering and sciences with the humanities can be challenged by Engineering Studies students who have gone through a program that challenged them to become interdisciplinary individuals. Engineering Studies students may create or facilitate technologies that will determine people’s lives; their perspectives can make technology less problematic and give more victories for marginalized communities. With those two layers of the EGRS cake, Engineering Studies students will be able to influence others in their scope to think deeply about the implications of technology, just as they did in Lafayette College. The divided nature of this country will be difficult to manage, but the Engineering Studies program must adapt to prepare these students for that. People want social justice reform and Engineering Studies can be a part of that conversation by including meaningful experiences that analyze the politics in the engineering field.
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