Search

Emphasizing socio-political context in undergraduate engineering courses is a complex challenge for accredited American engineering programs as they strive to pivot towards a more equitable future. Teaching engineering problem solving by isolating the technical perspective is the dominant culture, and change has been slow and insufficient. Looking at the complex human circumstances in which engineered systems are situated has significant, and sometimes life saving, benefits. On the contrary, the common de-contextualized approach to teaching engineering has been shown to have significant impacts on how students behave as future engineers. Furthermore, eurocentric teaching practices have been documented as a contributor to the lack of gender and ethinic diversity in engineering. Re-contextualizing civil engineering courses has shown to increase students' motivation, sense of social responsibility, and agency. The ASCE Code of Ethics states that "Engineers ... first and foremost, protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public," a notion that was first added to the code in 1977. In recent years, some civil and environmental engineering (CEE) faculty members and programs have responded to this ethical imperative by re-contextualizing civil engineering education in relation to the communities ("the public") the civil engineer is ethically obligated to protect and serve. To determine the extent of these efforts to re-introduce socio-technical context in CEE curricula, we are conducting a systematic review of the published literature. The objectives of this research are to document, synthesize, and amplify the work of these scholars and to encourage the community of CEE faculty to re-contextualize the knowledge and skills taught in the CEE curriculum. This paper describes the methodology, including search terms and sources examined, reports the preliminary results of the review, and synthesizes the preliminary findings. Future work will propose strategies and structures that could be adapted and employed by civil engineering faculty throughout the U.S. to 1) engage and retain students from groups that historically have been excluded from CEE and 2) better educate CEE students to engineer a more equitable and just future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]