Abet 2000 And Community Service Projects For Engineering Students

ABET 2000 criteria require that students show a knowledge of professional ethics as well as a knowledge of cultural and global issues. These topics are not often easily addressed in traditional approaches to engineering courses, however they are a natural part of community service projects. The author will discuss how community service projects have been used with great success in the ASME student section at Grand Valley State University and how two different service projects (in two different semesters) were successfully integrated into a senior level heat transfer class. Finally the author will discuss how to approach service work within the context of overly busy faculty and student schedules. “The habit of apprehending a technology in its completeness: this is the essence of technological humanism, and this is what we should expect education in higher technology to achieve. I believe it could be achieved by making specialist studies the core around which are grouped liberal studies which are relevant to those specialist studies. But they must be relevant; the path to culture should be through a man’s specialism, not by-passing it... A student who can weave his technology into the fabric of society can claim to have a liberal education; a student who cannot weave his technology into the fabric of society cannot claim even to be a good technologist.” (Lord Ashby, Technology and the Academics)