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In this presentation, we explore the lessons learned from two courses entitled “War, Machine, Culture, and Society: History and Engineering in the Second World War,” which integrate engineering problem-solving within a World War II history course. This comes as part of a larger project to bring the humanities and engineering into deeper conversation with one another. For this project, we are especially interested in the aspect of teaching aspect of such a course, wherein an engineering professor and humanities professor “share the stage” in a classroom, especially given that STEM disciplines and humanities disciplines present and value different kinds of knowledge. Frome a framework of “epistemological identity,” we use classroom observations, focus group data, and analysis of syllabi to probe into the ways that instructors from radically different disciplines develop coursework together and navigate the classroom space. For this WIP, we are currently engaged in the data collection and analysis phase, and anticipate being finished by the end of the semester. We believe this work has important implications as we see more work calling for inter/transdisciplinary considerations in engineering, the development of greater social and emotional skills for engineers, and various iterations of STEM plus the arts and humanities. As these movements continue to gain momentum, we will need to better understand how to better integrate various disciplines into engineering; this project will discuss difficulties and successes from practitioners doing this work, considering especially the ways that knowledge is constructed, conveyed, and valued by practitioners in the classroom. 

There have recently been calls for post-secondary engineering programs to develop more well-rounded engineers who are more capable of understanding and empathizing with clients, as well engage in stronger ethical decision-making. In this study, we examine the efficacy of a hybrid humanities-engineering course in developing the empathetic performativity of engineering students taught at two universities. We use a discourse analysis methodology to examine the language in student assignments over the trajectory of this course, looking for instances where engineering students position themselves empathetically within their work. Based on our analysis, we see small gains in the empathetic performances of engineering students in this context, however, these findings are nuanced and require qualification. Keywords: Discourse Analysis, Humanities-Driven STEM, Empathy