For decades, curricula in the Humanities and Social Sciences (H/SS) for engineering students and faculty have been dominated by the now-displaced ABET "Conventional Criteria" which required that engineering students devote "one-half year [of study to the] humanities and social sciences" ("ABET Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs," I.C.3.a.) The "Conventional Criteria" went on at some length in I.C.3.d. (2) to justify this requirement in terms of: a) arguing for the importance of H/SS to both engineering and general education; b) "making engineers fully aware of their social responsibilities and [becoming] better able to consider related factors in the decision-making process"; c) enjoining that such courses be selected to "provide both breadth and depth and not [be] limited to a selection of unrelated introductory courses"; and d) defining both acceptable traditional H/SS areas of study (e.g., history, philosophy, economics, foreign languages), acceptable nontraditional subjects ("technology and human affairs, history of technology, and professional ethics and social responsibility") as well as unacceptable courses ("courses that instill cultural values are acceptable while routine exercises of personal craft are not.") In short, the old "Conventional Criteria" not only mandated how much H/SS course work students had to pass but specified in some detail the breadth and depth of acceptable course areas for study.
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