We will discuss why we need to do this work, what we do in our courses, and how we can sustain this work. It is important for faculty to recognize the opportunities that exist to embrace and integrate the sociotechnical complexity of engineering into our instruction, including the ways in which engineering promotes or prevents injustice through the designed world. What do systemic racism, social justice and Black Lives Matter (BLM) mean for engineering faculty in terms of our teaching? Historically, issues of social justice have not been part of the curriculum however engineering practice involves not only technical dimensions but also a recognition of the complex social systems embedded into the profession. Professor Susan Lord and Assistant Professor, University of San Diego, March 1st 2021. This talk focuses on engineering but many issues are also relevant for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Exploring Anti-racism and Social Justice in Engineering Curricula In this talk, we will describe the examples of a conflict minerals module in Circuits, a gerrymandering module in Statics, and a “Final Straw” module in Materials Science that includes consideration of accessibility for the disabled community. In addition, we are developing modules that emphasize the sociotechnical nature of engineering. We are developing a new Integrated Engineering program that incorporates this perspective. As part of an NSF-funded Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) grant, “Developing Changemaking Engineers,” the Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering (SMSE) at the University of San Diego (USD) is exploring such issues. In this talk, we investigate a promising approach to transform who participates in engineering education and what they learn: a cultural shift from positioning engineering as a purely technical endeavor to framing it as sociotechnical. How can we educate students to be the most effective engineers in the workplace when they graduate? How can we attract a broader range of students to engineering? These are important questions for engineering educators. Professor Susan Lord and Assistant Professor, University of San Diego, Feb. 2021 Developing changemaking engineers by recognizing engineering as a sociotechnical endeavor
The goal of these workshops is to expose faculty in the Chemical & Biological Engineering department (and more broadly at UNM) to new pedagogical approaches to teaching and to prepare them to engage in the changes being implemented in the department to transform education in the chemical engineering department.