Social Context
In this section, we delve into the history of engineering on a national scale as well as the history of engineering specifically at Lafayette College. Along with this history, we also delve into the culture of engineering and other problems that are associated with it in the workplace and even at colleges and universities. This analysis of culture is especially important at Lafayette as that is the focus of our study and where we will be implementing our engineering module. We believe that by adding an engineering studies module many more engineering students will gain a new understanding of engineering and the way it can connect to other paths of study leading to more well-rounded engineers which in turn will help improve the engineering culture at Lafayette which will hopefully spread and transition to a national scope as these students move into the world.
National History of Engineering
The period after World War two was an important time for the United States as the economy was booming and life was on the up and up. Engineers were feeling the effects of this as well as it seemed almost anything was possible through technology. Wisnioski, the author of Engineers for Change, emphasizes this with this quote which states, “the period from 1945 to 1964 was one of near-utopian belief in technology beneficence”(Wisnioski 3). Unfortunately, this did not last long as the country soon after transitioned into the Cold War era. This blind acceptance of following the wills of governments agendas is evidenced by this quote from (Fred something) which states, “the engineers…the people who made the hardware, who used existing knowledge to make something go, were in nine out of ten, conservative in politics, acceptance of any regime in which they found themselves, interested in making their machine work, indifferent to long term social effects” (Friedel 2). This quote perfectly illustrates how Engineers began to lose the trust of the American people. They were disconnected from the communities they served, were not involved in social change and were just seen as machines aiming to accomplish the will of various regimes. Engineers working more and more on government projects as well as a rapid increase in technology that was not beneficial to society made people question technology’s value to society and whether or not man could even control it. Engineers had lost how to “restore progressive meaning to technology”(Wisnioski 10). The military applications of technology at this time made it feel like technology had become heartless and was no longer a thing that could improve society and the quality of life. Engineers became the scapegoat for not being able to control technology and how it was now used to harm humanity rather than advance it. Many engineers and other activities sought to find a way to restore humanity to engineering.
During this time of engineering education was mainly focused on the technical aspects and there was little to no emphasis on the social factors involved. This further compounded the issues that were starting to arise with engineers as their academic background was ignoring community creating a cycle of new engineers that when creating technology never thought about community continuing to drive the lack of trust of engineers at the time. With lots of activities voicing their concern with the current trajectory of engineering, many universities were inspired to make changes to their engineering curriculum to reflect more modern and humanistic approaches to engineering. Edwin Layton author of Revolt of the Engineers: Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession stated that the goal engineers were trying to solve to find were ways “to lead their profession in a certain direction cultivate a special role for (some) engineers in solving the social and economic problems of modern America (Friedel 4). They believed that this change would need to start at the university level. One institution which led the way in this was MIT. Many students voiced their displeasure with the fact that the current engineering curriculum was too focused on technical aspects of engineering and wanted a new interdisciplinary curriculum. This allowed for engineers to be educated differently and allowed them to be more holistically minded and be overall better engineers that could approach problems from new angles. Other universities such as Harvey Mudd, CalTech, and UCLA also pioneered a new interdisciplinary engineering curriculum with UCLA stating that engineers should be “managers of the public good”(Wisnioski 184). These 4 universities helped pave the way for a new engineering reform that continued into the 1990s.
History of Engineering Studies
Lafayette College has a storied engineering program dating 155 years with the first civil engineering degrees being offered in 1866. Over the years the program grew as did the college with more majors such as electrical being added in 1889, followed by mechanical in 1899. During World War II Lafayette helped train cadets in engineering. However, much like many schools, Lafayette’s engineering department also went through changes after the war. Students at Lafayette, much like at schools like MIT, called for change in the engineering department. This is evidenced by a “The Lafayette” article where in laying out improvements for the college stated that “the entire engineering curriculum should undergo intensive investigation”(Wilmer & Rehrig, 1969, 6). These students believed that to compete with other larger universities and offer competitive engineering the school needed to restructure the curriculum to reflect current changes in society. They further argued in another point that the school needed to restructure BA and BS requirements to allow students to explore more interdisciplinary interests. The school soon after introduced the Bachelor of Arts in Engineering as well, becoming a co-ed college in 1970. This major at the time focused on flexibility within the engineering department incorporating liberal arts courses with the technical side of the engineering program. Over time the major eventually garnered the name of engineering studies.
Lafayette’s engineering continued to experience reform in its engineering department in the 1980s and 90s. But even so, it still did not make Lafayette special in being able to overcome the pervasive engineering culture that exists today. In our project, we will help show how more work needs to be done to help educate engineering students into looking at problems in a different way. Far too many engineers look at problems through the lens of “how can fix this problem?” instead of asking “why is this problem happening?”. This is part of what makes the engineering studies program special and the skills that are developed need to be shared with other engineers. In the 1990’s the engineering study major began to develop as more courses focused on engineering economic and engineering public policy were added. Later in 2007 Engineering studies became its separate bachelor of arts department. Today the major is a key player in helping with engineering reform at Lafayette as taking key components from the major and adding them into others will help continue to make Lafayette engineering unique and stay competitive with other universities.
National Culture
While the history of engineering shows that there has been change in engineering for the better there are still many cultural problems that plague engineering on a national scale. There is still a disconnect between engineers and the communities they design for. Many engineers design for the community as passive receivers often not taking into account how this technology will be used by the people they will provide it for. This is highlighted in multiple cases by the book Engineering and Sustainable Community Development (Lucena). Problems arise because the community is not involved in the process of developing these technologies because the engineers are making assumptions about how they will use the technology. One great example of this from the book is given when discussing new water technologies given to Africa in the late 1980s. The water systems were designed to be solar-powered and the engineers believed that they would help give these people an easy and sustainable way to get water. While a good idea in theory the project ended up failing. When researchers returned to examine the progress they found that only “five years later in 1995 … only 30% were still in operation and by 2000 10 years after the initial implementation they found that only 12 percent were still in operation”(Lucena 4). These systems did not fail because they were designed poorly. They did exactly what they were meant to do and were engineered well from a technical standpoint. They failed because they were not designed with the community in mind. This example is crucial for engineers to understand. The engineers that designed these technologies assumed that the people who received them would know how to use and operate them as well as assuming that these systems would fit into the way their community operates. They did not fit in with the community and were neglected.
This case perfectly illustrates a huge problem in modern engineering which is not listening to the community when designing technologies for them. Engineers often believe that they are the smartest ones in the room at all times, but just being smart is not going to help when it comes to being involved in the communities that you are designing. Community needs to be at the center of the design and to learn about the community you need to be able to listen and understand that you do not know everything about them and what they need. According to Dr. Pathote who is an engineering professor at Chameli Devi in India, “in addition to having the ability to explain technical problems they (engineers) must be politically aware so that technical decisions can be made, understood and communicated across cultural boundaries”(Pothote) This quote emphasizes the need for better communication skills to be developed among engineers.
Engineering Sustainable Community Design hammers this point home as it discusses even more cases such as the Honduras dam. Local engineers and policymakers believed that the dam was too risky and that the benefit was not worth the immense cost. The World Bank believed that while costly the benefits were worth the cost and would help the Honduran economy. They went ahead with the project ignoring the pushback. The dam ended up having multiple expensive failures and repairs and ended up costing Honduras millions putting them into massive debt and even led to their currency losing value. It is not often taught in engineering programs to listen, which is why the engineers ignored the community and went ahead with the project despite them saying that they thought it would fail. Far too often engineers get caught up in how much good the project will do for the people rather than listening to what the people want. This issue is one that has been looming large over the engineering community and new ways need to be developed to combat it.
These current issues with engineers and their disconnect from the communities that they design for highlights the need for engineer curriculum reform on a national level. According to a study done by the Colorado School of the Mines, “Most engineering curricula continue to privilege the technical over the social dimensions of problems and deprive students of the opportunity to develop crucial problem framing skills”(Mines). This issue is highlighted by the fact that “the first introduction to engineering is always through sciences i.e physics, chemistry and mathematics”(Pothote). If engineers’ first courses for engineering are all technical then they will always approach problems through that lens. Engineering curricula could benefit from having a larger emphasis on socio-technical engineering in the beginning of undergraduate studies. Colorado School of the Mines defines sociotechnical thinking as “the interplay between relevant social and technical factors in the problem to be solved”(Mines). This definition shows that engineers need to have an educational background where they can easily evaluate social factors from a variety of disciplines. Just learning to solve classroom problems does not effectively prepare students to solve real-world problems. While ABET, which guides engineering curriculum, does highlight the need for both technical and non-technical aspects for engineering curriculum, engineering culture puts a much larger emphasis on the value of technical skills. They admit that while they have added more “professional” skills which include communication, teamwork, understanding ethics, and social context, they still believe that “there is considerable research that remains to be done there”(Shuman). These thoughts are also echoed by NAE which says that while “technical excellence is the essential attribute of engineering graduates” that those graduates should also possess “communication, ethical reasoning, and societal and global contextual analysis skills”(Mines). Often important skills such as ethics, sustainability, policy and the ability to work well in teams are given a back seat. A curriculum that focuses on many of these non-technical skills would go a long way in helping to produce more well-rounded and better-prepared engineers. This sentiment is echoed by Profesor Amadei from Rice University who says that current traditional engineering education no longer produces “global citizen engineers who have the skills to address complex geopolitical economic problems and the complex problems of our society”(Amadei). This leaves a gap in what engineers learn and what their actual function is in society.
These skills are essential for engineers to have. Non-technical skills need to be hit upon at a much earlier point in their academic careers. It is too late to add many of the skills later. New engineers need to start developing these skills as soon as they step foot on campus so they can begin to develop and apply them to the problems they will come across in their daily lives. Once they graduate and enter the workforce, having these non-technical skills will help them redefine what it means for an engineer to be a social agent. Adding many of these ideas to the current engineering curriculum as well as education and encouraging engineers to pursue more non-technical engineering disciplines would do a lot to help close this gap.
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 doing 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 personal 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 into engineering through the lense socio-technical engineering solutions.
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