Lafayette Culture
Many of the problems that plague engineering on a national level also plague engineering at Lafayette as well. Just from our experience at Lafayette during our first three years as Engineering Studies majors, our team has witnessed firsthand many of the problems with the engineering culture at Lafayette. Most engineers do not see themselves as part of the greater academic community and feel like they are a step above the other majors. This is evidenced by statements like, “well she has a fake major” or “well if I was an econ major I would easily have a 4.0” and even “why are you complaining about your major try to do engineering”. A large number of engineering students show little respect for the other majors on campus, especially those that focus more on the arts and social sciences. This superiority is even seen in the engineering department itself as other majors see themselves better than others and even belittling the Engineering Studies major with terms such as “pretendgineer” or “pretendgineering”. This shows that much like on the national scale Lafayette engineers value technical prowess overall believing that non-technical disciplines are below them and not worth their time. Some engineers may feel differently and if given the opportunity would enjoy engaging in more classes outside their major that reflect their interests. A further cultural problem that exists among the engineering department is the stigma around even switching their major to Engineering Studies. Most students who switch from a high technical major such as civil engineering or mechanical and go to Engineering Studies are seen as failures. From a poll of the senior Engineering Studies majors, 64% of them transferred in from other majors. Students will say, “yeah he is an idiot he was a mechanical engineer and had to switch to Engineering Studies”. Many of these students do not even consider if this switch was because they realized that they wanted to pursue something different. A lot of these issues revolve around the fact that most engineers do not even know what Engineering Studies is. They do not understand its purpose or goals for its students and because it is a Bachelor of Arts believe that is useless in the real world. Rather than being mocked, the idea of interdisciplinary studies should be celebrated in the engineering department. If more students were introduced to what the major is through our proposed ES 101 module that would help change many of the engineers’ perspectives on the major. More would understand the purpose of why it exists at Lafayette and why it helps make Lafayette’s engineering department unique. Furthermore, it could even help many engineers who are not Engineering Studies majors better understand the value of non-technical skills in engineering by giving them an introduction to engineering through the lens of socio-technical engineering solutions.
Current Issues
Engineering education has been an ongoing conversation in terms of how it must reinvent itself to meet the constantly changing social and political landscape that the world operates in; now more than ever, engineers serve as the agents of society that are tasked with tackling monumental issues such as climate change, and yet in the same era we are also facing the consequences of learned biases in technology, and how these biases perpetuate the subpar conditions that vulnerable populations live on a day to day basis. On an even larger scale, engineers must be able to explain and defend the decisions they make in a decisive political climate. The purely techno-centric background is not good enough anymore to tackle these issues. Understanding that the problems Climate Change creates and the solutions that are synthesized to help people in North America are region-specific, and not a blanket solution to apply to villages in India or Africa, is now a requirement for engineers, not a luxury.
These issues lie at the crux of the argument as to why engineering education has changed in the past, and why it will continue to be an ongoing process that warrants constant revision and reevaluation of the skills engineers must be equipped with. (Should probably put this in with the socio-political)
Expanding Socio-Political Context
The nature of our project lends itself to a large degree of overlap between the social and political contexts behind the creation of an introductory module for Engineering Studies due to the similarity between the issues plaguing engineering for the last century and the attitude current engineering students take when met with the concept that Engineering Studies are as valid a branch of engineering as any other. On a national level, institutions that specialize in engineering education such as the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE), the National Academies of Sciences, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE), have all recognized and defined institutions with programs like the EGRS Division at Lafayette College, as ‘engineering education institutions that show a national interest in challenging the traditional engineering model’. At a national level, these institutions have all acknowledged that the engineers of 2020 and beyond must be able to develop solutions suitable for people of diverse backgrounds and draw upon the knowledge and talents of people who were not traditionally represented within the engineering profession. To that end, engineering education institutions across America have taken up the challenge of redefining what the ‘2020 engineer’; institutions such as Harvey Mudd, Olin, Purdue, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Colorado School of Mines have all incorporated community-centric development-based courses into their engineering curriculum.
All of this is not to discredit what Lafayette College engineering has done in the past or discredit the path it is going now. Now more than ever, Lafayette College has taken steps towards expanding the engineering education division beyond the traditional disciplines by introducing environmental engineering and integrative engineering programs. The Engineering Studies program would not exist if the institution itself did not understand and champion the importance of an engineering education that pays attention to the skills learned outside of the traditional engineering education curriculum. While we (students) praise Harvey Mudd and Olin for their approach to engineering education, however, we also write off the very engineering program that seeks to best incorporate the ‘2020 engineer’ vision as a major for those who were not bright enough to continue with a more traditional engineering approach. While it is unlikely that the vast majority of engineering students take this stance regarding the Engineering Studies program, and towards other ‘non-technical majors’, there is a large enough minority that holds this view that it is worth addressing.
When addressing the issue on a smaller, ‘Lafayette’-specific scale, it is important to establish the current population of the major right now. The Engineering Studies major is made up partially of people who have declared as an EGRS Major from the start, and more importantly, it is made up of people who have switched majors from one of the more traditional engineering disciplines to EGRS for one reason or another. As it stands right now, the lack of a solid introduction of the major could be a contributor to the ‘stigma’ Engineering Studies has among its engineering peers. Having a substantial population of the major be made up of students who have transferred out of traditional engineering disciplines contributes to the impression that the new major is ‘easier’ than the old one.
One of the steps that the college could take towards combating the current divide between traditional engineering divisions and EGRS Majors would be to introduce the concept of Engineering Studies earlier on during a 4-year education at Lafayette College. When a freshman signs up for the Introduction to Engineering course, they are given the opportunity to take part in a small survey that allows them to take part in small-scale projects and learn about certain opportunities within certain divisions of engineering. The Chemical Engineering module, for example, had us create our own renewable fuel source using biofuel, and taught us about how chemistry all plays a part in that process. In the preliminary survey, the option associated with that interest painted the Chemical Engineering module as ‘an opportunity to discover alternative fuel sources. If we are to create an EGRS Module for the ES 101 course, advertising the major for what it is in very broad strokes, a more liberal and ‘people-focused’ approach to traditional engineering, focused on critical thinking outside of the traditional Engineering Problem-Solving method, could serve to entice students that may have interest in the major that they did not even realize was there.
While the addition of the EGRS module alone would not necessarily solve the stigma of traditional engineering vs. the ‘2020’ Engineer, it would help solidify the identity of the major in the minds of students earlier on and give an additional point of entry for those interested in the major aside from those who knew about Engineering Studies before coming to Lafayette, or those who happen to transfer into it. Lafayette College as an institution is following the notion that the engineer of tomorrow must be able to tackle new challenges that traditional engineering education alone would not prepare them for, however, the Engineering Division could do more to promote just how important that notion is. Engineering Studies is a solid step in the right direction for the college, though the addition of an Engineering Studies Module would be taking the next step in terms of preparing more students for what engineering requires of them in the future. More exposure for Engineering Studies as a ‘legitimate’ form of engineering would serve the engineering community at Lafayette well, and the ES 101 Module would be a strong candidate for creating that exposure.
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