(188h) Why Incorporating Community and Global Issues into the Classroom Matters

In the fourteen years since the National Academy of Engineers started “changing the conversation” through its engineering messages campaign, there has been increasing emphasis on highlighting the vital role engineers play in solving grand challenges such as access to clean water and more affordable renewable energy. This emphasis on how engineers solve problems, instead of creating them, echoes calls for action from other agencies such as the United Nations, the American Chemical Society, and the Royal Society of Chemistry. However, pre-college students still tend to believe that engineering is an individualistic, status-driven profession and not a collaborative, altruistic one. As a result, students from demographics that tend to favor “helping professions,” may find pursuing an engineering degree incompatible with their core values. For those students that do enroll in engineering programs, this belief can either be reinforced or ameliorated by how engineering is framed in their classes and extracurricular activities such as the Grand Challenge Scholars program and Engineers Without Borders. This talk summarizes eight years of research by the authors on how framing engineering as an altruistic profession affects engineering identity development. It places a particular emphasis on using social congruity theory to help understand the engineering attitudes of female and underrepresented minority students. In addition, it provides examples of activities that be used to teach both core chemical engineering concepts while highlighting engineers’ vital role in making the world a better place. In total, the results of this research highlight that intentionally framing engineering as altruism is compatible with teaching core concepts and reinforces learning by helping students align pursuing an engineering career with their core values.