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This paper explores how using concepts and frameworks from Science and Technology Studies (STS) to think and practice critically about engineering for community development (ECD) is a necessary precondition and preparation if engineering educators hope to instill socially responsible behavior in our students and social justice in their community projects. With the significant surge of community engagement projects in US engineering programs, there is a growing need for developing critical lenses for engineering students involved in community development, so they do not continue reproducing unfair neo-colonial practices and assumptions of past development practices. Here we explore how STS concepts have served engineering students to develop critical praxis, a more robust and responsible understanding of the relationships between engineering faculty, students, and communities, and the material and social worlds in which they are embedded, using community development projects related to artisanal gold mining, inclusive management of electronic waste, and water access for underserved communities as examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our S-STEM program Humanitarian Engineering and Science Ambassadors (HESA) supports the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated need at the Colorado School of Mines. Our program is grounded in a funds of knowledge (FOK) approach to teaching and learning, mentorship, and student professional development. Funds of knowledge are "historically-accumulated and culturally-developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and wellbeing" (Gonzalez et al. 2005). Our previous research found that low-income engineering students who could make connections between their FOK and engineering learning had stronger self-efficacy beliefs, interest in engineering, and a sense of graduation certainty. Whereas the students in our previous study had self-developed this "connecting" skill, our program provides a formal platform for low-income students to learn and practice those connecting skills at the graduate level. This will allow us to investigate through pre- and post-surveys whether "connecting" skills can be developed through mentorship and whether developed connecting skills enhance their self-efficacy, STEM identities, and persistence beliefs. This poster shares the results from student surveys completed at the beginning of our first academic year of the S-STEM program, reflecting on their undergraduate experiences. Specifically, we highlight the particular FOK held by our students as they entered graduate school from engineering and science undergraduate programs and we identify differences in student undergraduate experiences based on their intersectional identities. For example, we found that women were more likely than men to connect individual FOK with their graduate coursework and had strong STEM identities (including feelings of being recognized as being an engineer or scientist), even though they reported lower levels of belongingness in STEM. Students who identified as Latinx reported stronger FOK related to tinkering, strong internal and external recognition of being a scientist or engineer, and higher levels of grit; however, they simultaneously reported lower levels of belonging in their undergraduate science and engineering courses, graduation certainty, and university support. Students with the greatest financial need reported lower levels of belongingness, self-efficacy, recognition, and university support, but stronger tinkering funds of knowledge. This research underlines the demographic differences present among low-income STEM students and points to fruitful areas of mentorship and professional development that take into consideration the intersectionality of students' identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to show how graduate engineering students working on Engineeringfor-Community-Development (ECD) projects and theses 1) acquire socio-technical education that prepares them to critically engage with community development (formation); 2) propose to translate their academic scholarship into formats and language that lead to effective engagement and appropriation by the communities they want to serve (translation); and, from this translation, 3) extend their scholarship into curricular opportunities for undergraduate engineers interested in ECD (extension). Traditional graduate engineering training often lacks education about understanding engineering as a socio-technical endeavor while graduate engineering research is often for graduate advisors to be presented in professional conferences, published in academic journals, and eventually contributing to the output of a research lab. Even when graduate engineering education is complemented with ancillary "social" topics like research ethics or professional communication, it often lacks a concerted effort to view engineering as a sociotechnical endeavor, which, as we propose, is a necessary precondition for effective community engagement. Even when the research topic could be relevant to communities or undergraduate engineering students interested in ECD projects, graduate students rarely translate their results into formats and languages understandable by different audiences. For the process of formation, we will outline how graduate students in the Humanitarian Engineering and Science (HES) Program at Colorado School of Mines (Mines) receive education and mentoring in epistemic decolonization where they learn to question the assumptions, knowledge, and methods that engineers from the Global North have used to engage communities from the Global South and the processes through which students frame their research questions, methods, and community engagement. For the process of translation, we will review the literature on "research translation" and propose models for research translation specific to the community contexts in which they are working: recyclers of electronic and construction waste, artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) communities, and houseless communities in need of clean water. For the process of extension, we will review the literature on graduateundergraduate mentoring related to engineering design projects and propose curricular opportunities for involving other engineering students in community development generated from the graduate student research and translation activities. With an increasing number of ECD-related graduate programs appearing in the horizon, there will be an increasing need for effective models for formation, research translation, and extension like those proposed in this paper. This paper hopes to contribute to these emerging needs and the future development of these crucial areas of graduate engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The PIRE Responsible Mining, Resilient Communities (RMRC) project is a multi-country, interinstitutional, and interdisciplinary global research collaboration whose goal is to co-design socially responsible and sustainable gold mining practices with communities, engineers, and social scientists. This paper will investigate two key research questions. The first question considers how participating in the summer session influences students' global sociotechnical competency with the second question analyzing how the changes in sociotechnical competency impact the students' confidence in their engineering ability. The project hosted three intensive summer field sessions that each enrolled a different group of students. In 2019, the students conducted research in the field in Colombia while in 2020, the students completed the research completely virtual due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2021, the students participated in the project in a hybrid format with time split between the field and virtual work. To assess changes in students' learning and attitudes, we collected data from the students before and after the summer sessions in the form of interviews, surveys, and essays. The data will be analyzed to investigate whether the format of the summer session (in person, virtual, and hybrid) differently influenced students' global sociotechnical competency and their confidence as engineers. Other research has shown that service learning increases engineering students' confidence in their engineering ability. The data analyzed from this project describes how this may be context-specific. This paper will shed light on broader concerns in engineering education about if and how specific kinds of service learning can enhance students' global sociotechnical competency and their confidence as engineers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student engineers need both excellent technical training and critical skills to put their training to its best uses. At Colorado School of Mines we are experimenting with a series of learning experiences to help students use their technical skills thoughtfully and overcome technical instrumentalism, which we define as the idea that technical skills alone can solve all the practical problems that they encounter. In these experiences, students work with members of Colombian artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) communities and Colombian students to address geological hazards that endanger miners. This sequenced set of experiences was designed so that students would engage with communities to better understand the complex social, technical, and environmental risks that miners confront and then propose and, in some cases, develop projects to reduce those risks. In this paper we describe the first two phases of this experience. Further research on this learning experience will be necessary to understand its effects for all parties involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research base paper examines students who are the first in their families to attend college. Our research seeks to understand the role students' funds of knowledge makes in first-generation college students' undergraduate experience. Funds of knowledge are the set of formal/informal knowledge and skills that students learn through family, friends, and communities outside of academic institutions. This paper reports funds of knowledge themes relevant to first-generation college students in engineering and the process of gathering validity evidence to support the funds of knowledge themes. Using ethnographic and interview data, six themes emerged: connecting experiences, community networks, tinkering knowledge, perspective taking, reading people, and mediational skills. Pilot data collected at two institutions were used to run exploratory factor analysis to verify the underlying theoretical structures among the themes. Results of the exploratory factor analysis found that almost all items reliably loaded onto their respective constructs. The funds of knowledge identified in this study are not an exhaustive account, nevertheless uncovering these hidden assets can support first-generation college students to see their experiences as equally valuable knowledge in engineering. We are currently in an ongoing process of collecting a second dataset to perform a confirmatory factor analysis, i.e., the next phase of the validation process for survey instrument development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In engineering education, programs designed to increase students from underrepresented groups encounter multiple challenges, particularly in the case of students from indigenous backgrounds. In the 1990s, the University of Auckland in New Zealand faced persistently low levels of recruitment, retention, and performance of engineering students from Māori tribes. To address these issues, the University created what would eventually be called the 5R Program: Readiness, Recruitment, Retention, Role Modeling, and Research, with the explicit goals of boosting numbers of students coming into and remaining enrolled in engineering, as well as increasing academic performance levels. Between 1998 and 2011, the 5R Program was highly successful, increasing both recruitment and retention, as well as boosting performance levels—to the point that academic performance among Māori engineering students surpassed the non-indigenous engineering student population. Some Māori students went on to complete master's and Ph.D. programs in engineering. Prior to 1998, Māori and Pasifika students experienced significant struggles in engineering education at The University of Auckland, so our research question focuses on the means by which such students within the 5R Program reached such high achievement levels, including what programmatic elements boosted their success. To explain and provide a conceptual framework for the mechanisms of inclusive excellence, we focus on a case study of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, using a published framework that includes six Engineering-for-Social-Justice (E4SJ) criteria. Each E4SJ criterion raises critical questions that unveil different reasons why the 5R Program succeeded, and collectively the E4SJ criteria serve as a prism through which to view the 5R Program's effective retention, recruitment, and performance strategies. The paper concludes with applicable lessons for recruitment and retention programs that focus on and can be adapted for students from multiple cultural and indigenous backgrounds as well as lessons for programs that work to foster the success of underrepresented students generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent growth in community engagement programs in engineering education reveals the importance of partnerships and community; however, there has been minimal research and reflection on how to design community engagement programs to represent the needs and rights of the community. This interactive special session addresses this gap by challenging participants to learn and critically think about the communities they are serving. This paper outlines the theoretical foundations for this workshop, with an overview of two publications: one that categorizes the way engineers work with the people they serve either as clients, stakeholders, users, or citizens; and the other that categorizes specific interactions, activities, and the language of community engagement partnerships as transactional, cooperative or communal. In addition to the theoretical grounding, the paper also provides a summary of the activities that we will be facilitating during the special session, including analyzing cases and design tools, reflecting on current program structures, and creating an action plan to implement changes in the participants' current, anticipated, or imagined engagement programs. By the end of the special session, participants will be able to evaluate their past, current or future partnerships, observe how program structures can influence partnerships, and assess the differences that these partnerships can make in the success or failures of community engagement programs. Participants will leave the session with a practical action plan to implement the types of partnerships they wish to build with their community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though engineering is often perceived as a pathway of upward mobility in the United States, very little is known about the experiences of undergraduate engineering students who come from low-income backgrounds or are the first in their families to attend college. The scant research that does exist about low income, first generation students (LIFGs) is grounded in a deficiency model, focusing on what these students lack. Our project breaks with the existing scholarship by identifying the ways in which LIFG knowledges and experiences outside the classroom, including the practical knowledge they develop in their lives and at work, could offer innovative ways for all students to define, solve and design for pressing engineering problems. Through ethnographic and collaborative research with LIFGs at a public engineering university and a community college, we identify students' funds of knowledge, or the knowledge gained from students' family and cultural backgrounds, that is crucial to engineering innovation but neglected in the curriculum they encounter in college. These funds of knowledge include defining and solving problems in the midst of financial and material scarcity; building, fixing, and adapting technical artifacts and systems; and empathizing with marginalized groups and communities. We suggest that these knowledges position LIFGs as effective innovators of engineering design for community development, though few pursue this path because of financial constraints. Finally, we identify future pathways of this exploratory research, including a) an international collaboration investigating the role of socioeconomic class for teaching and learning about engineering design and community engagement; b) a mentoring program between the engineering university and community college under study, including a university outreach program to assist LIFGs in enhancing their resumes; and c) strategies to bring LIFG funds of knowledge into engineering science and design courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role can the social justice (SJ) dimensions inherent in engineering science (ES) courses play in promoting student engagement and learning? What role can this integration play in educating more socially just and perhaps better engineers? While the other papers in this session address these questions in diverse ways, this one provides a framework for these questions by defining SJ, identifying what inherent means in this context, explaining why engineering sciences are a fitting, yet problematic, curricular site for integration, and presenting challenges and opportunities related to this integration. First, we explore why the ES are considered the sacred cow of engineering education. Second, we show certain ways in which SJ dimensions are inherent in the ES. Third, we provide an operational definition of SJ as it relates to engineering and six engineering-for-social-justice (ESJ) criteria to guide educators attempting to integrate SJ in ES courses. Fourth, we outline how two specific curricular examples of this integration engage these criteria. Fifth, we present challenges and opportunities involved in this integration. Finally, we allow the voices of engineering educators attempting these integrations to share their perspectives. Through the framework presented here, and the examples drawn from the other papers in this session, we seek to encourage other engineering science educators to consider integrating social justice into their courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Design for technology, which prevails in engineering design courses, addresses constraints such as budget, time and functionality established by a client. Meanwhile, human-centered design (HCD) emphasizes users' needs, desires, and cultural location, mainly through ergonomics and esthetics.3 Although an established concept and practice in design studies and some forms of industrial design, HCD has evolved to consider low-income and underserved communities as users, challenging engineering design education to incorporate listening to users; accommodation of human capacities, needs, and desires; and attention to people's culturally situated resources, resource limitations, and opportunities.4 Despite its potential to push engineering education in productive directions, HCD also has its limitations, particularly its inability to grapple with the structural conditions that give rise to many of the needs HCD seeks to address. More generally, HCD can direct attention away from the critical and sometimes-subtle dimensions of social justice.5 Design cases that involve, for example, "design for the other 90%"6 or designing for people with disabilities redirect attention to questions of design for social justice. This paper identifies and briefly describes four forms of design: design for technology, HCD for users, HDC for communities, and design for social justice. The paper explores how social justice has been enacted--or neglected--in specific design contexts within engineering education, and how it can be further integrated in each of these forms of design education. This paper is part of a broader project to integrate social justice across three components of engineering curricula--engineering design, engineering sciences, and humanities and social sciences courses. To explore design-for-social-justice education in concrete terms, our investigation provides a specific, field-tested definition of social justice and draws from enactments of engineering for social justice in specific design courses: a human-centered problem definition course in the Humanitarian Engineering Program at the Colorado School of Mines, an interdisciplinary design studio in the Design, Innovation, and Society program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a learning-through-service experience in a first-year Biological Engineering design course at Louisiana State University. Our investigation culled data from semi-structured interviews with course instructors and students, reviews of course documents, contextualization within the literature on design, and our own lived experiences working with design students. Through this investigation, the paper seeks to provide: 1) a set of emerging principles of design for social justice and 2) examples of how those criteria are enacted in instructional design contexts. Such research outcomes can improve our understanding of how design for social justice can inform design in community engagement contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]