Engineering Students' Views of the Role of Engineering in Society

A developed sense of social responsibility should be inherent in the engineering profession such that any project can be seen as service to a community. Academic institutions carry the responsibility of teaching engineering students not only technical skills but also professional skills that relate to social responsibility, such as an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility and of the global and societal impacts of engineering decisions. Teaching techniques such as project-based service learning (PBSL) could increase a student’s awareness of social responsibility due to the community engagement (typically with underserved populations) and the reflective aspect inherent in PBSL. This study presents pre-post data from an assessment of engineering students’ development of social responsibility. The classes targeted for this study include freshman introductory classes, a sophomore/junior environmental engineering fundamentals class, civil engineering senior capstone design and graduate level structures and community development classes. In general, little change was seen in the preand postresults from a single semester. There were, however, notable differences between the graduate community development course and other courses, and between PBSL/PBL courses and traditional courses.