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Civil engineering education must be updated to keep pace with the profession and move past a culture of disengagement where technical work is considered separate from societal impact. Civil engineering students need to engage with diversity, equity, inclusion and justice (DEIJ) so they can understand the differential impacts of engineering on individuals from different groups within society. We aim to encourage the transformation of civil engineering education to produce engineers that will be prepared to meaningfully engage with society and advance justice in their future professional roles by providing examples of pedagogical change and analyzing student responses. In this study we implemented new course assignments in an introductory civil engineering course and a civil engineering materials course. In the introductory assignment students were taught to draw systems models and asked to consider social and technical factors contributing to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. In the materials course students completed pre-class readings about a regional highway reconstruction project, including articles about neighborhood opposition to the project, and participated in an in-class discussion. We analyzed student submissions using qualitative content analysis. Students in both courses (33% introductory, 60% materials) described learning about the impact engineering designs had on the community. In the materials class students were asked specifically about the impact of race and wealth on infrastructure decision-making. Student responses showed a wide range in how students understood the history of the situation and dynamics of power and privilege. Errors and limitations in student responses point to specific ways the instructors can improve student learning. Our results demonstrate that the integration of activities about societal impact is possible in technical engineering courses, emphasize the importance of integrating social context and related DEIJ content into technical courses, and provide insights into what students perceived they learned from the activities.
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Exploring Undergraduate Civil Engineering Students’ Perceptions of Infrastructure Inequities: A Pilot Study
As social justice issues facing our nation continue to be placed in the foreground of everyday life, it is important to understand how undergraduate civil engineering students perceive and understand relations between social justice and our infrastructure systems. Additionally, as more civil engineering undergraduate programs increase the emphasis on ethics and equity issues in their curricula, we must also seek to understand students’ awareness of their influence, as civil engineering professionals, to improve infrastructure systems that contribute to injustice and inequity. This paper presents findings from a pilot study conducted as part of an NSF-funded grant implementing cultural and curricular changes in a medium-sized civil engineering department in the southeast. Drawing on frameworks that examine how individuals critically understand systems of oppression, and the justification used to explain these systems this work examined student perceptions of inequities in societal infrastructure systems. The present study was guided by the following research questions: (1) Are undergraduate civil engineering students critically aware of inequities in society’s infrastructure systems? (2) To what degree are undergraduate civil engineering students comfortable challenging the status quo? (3) Is there an association between students’ critical awareness of inequitable infrastructure systems and their agency to promote systemic change as civil engineering professionals? Study data included survey responses to validated scales measuring: critical consciousness, system justification beliefs, social empathy, and sociopolitical control beliefs. New instrumentation was also piloted assessing equity-related perceptions and beliefs about civil engineering and infrastructure systems. Participants were junior and senior undergraduate civil engineering students (n = 21) enrolled in a professional development, community, and strategic change course, with data collected throughout the Fall 2020 semester. Results suggest that students did have awareness of infrastructure inequities and, on average, did not have strong system justification beliefs. However, there was not an association between students’ awareness of inequities and their agency beliefs about promoting systemic change as civil engineers. After presenting study results, we discuss implications of study results and propose directions for future research.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1730576
- PAR ID:
- 10336901
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2021 ASEE Annual Meeting
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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A national faculty Community of Practice (CoP) has created a model course for undergraduate infrastructure education as a part of its shared agenda. This CoP has collectively defined the domain of knowledge for undergraduate introductory infrastructure education; co-created and peer-reviewed more than 40 complete lessons for an introductory infrastructure course; shared best practices and resources among members; and provided mentorship to newer members adopting or adapting the materials. The Center for Infrastructure Transformation and Education (CIT-E) considers infrastructure as a system rather than a collection of unrelated structural/environmental/transportation components; even more importantly, this system is conceived of as a social-technical system that must be designed with equity and justice factors prioritized to include the diversity of users’ lived experiences. To that end, CoP members have recently produced learning materials on Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ) in infrastructure provision. The operationalizing of CoP as a theory of change by CIT-E has emerged beyond the initial National Science Foundation (NSF) funding a decade ago, employing various change strategies. Example strategies include expanding membership and creating alternative educational practices to support change and transformation. Recent NSF funding and new membership have created opportunities for the CoP to lead change at a much broader level across civil and environmental engineering education in the U.S. As part of this work, we conducted semi-structured interviews with seven change leaders in engineering education and DEIJ. We asked their perspectives on community of practice as a theory of change and whether it is appropriate for this work. Their responses were coded, revealing 169 codes, some of which advisors agreed upon, and many representing alternative perspectives. Processes such as considering, accepting, asking, and acknowledging are easy to overlook while executing change through mentoring, funding, and doing. The results of this work are helpful for civil and environmental engineering (CEE) faculty members interested in operationalizing change in their classroom and on their campus to meet ABET’s relatively recent DEI criteria, and the process in this study is transferrable to other fields that are also mobilizing transformative practices for integrating DEIJ principles into their curricula.more » « less
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