Pushing the Boundaries of Mass and Energy: Sustainability and Social Justice Integration in Core Engineering Science Courses

摘要

My presentation, part of a special session panel discussion on integrating social justice in core engineering courses, discusses lessons learned from specific attempts (in two courses over several years of teaching) to integrate social justice considerations in sustainability instruction. As the session description notes, most sustainability education in engineering has to date done a thorough job ensuring student learning about the relationship between sustainability considerations and the economic bottom line, but has done far less in considerations of people and communities, rarely taking up questions of power and equity. In my presentation I draw on my experience developing, teaching, and assessing modules in collaboration with colleagues in the Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace network to integrate social justice considerations in our core courses. I reflect on lessons learned from two assignments in two different core courses, each implemented in the larger context of engineering at a liberal arts college. Here introducing a social justice dimension of sustainability was a small part of a larger effort to integrate liberal education into core courses. One module introduced students in a first year Mass and Energy Balances course to the tool of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for developing and analyzing green products and processes, while simultaneously offering a critique of green consumerism which was incorporated into student LCA projects. A key learning outcome was that students understood not only the promises of the tool but also its limitations and when it is and is not appropriately used. A second module, in Engineering Thermodynamics, sought to integrate considerations of climate change, ethics, and global economic inequality. The course, taught in the fall semester, usually overlapped with a major international climate summit. Using the 2009 Copenhagen summit as case study, students analyzed the conflict between countries in the global North and global South, with guided prompts and background reading to aid them in understanding and incorporating into their analysis the power relations evident in the climate talks, borne of histories of colonialism and present-day neoliberal economic policies. This case study was among several ethics assignments offered throughout the semester, and in some years was part of a wider exploration of global climate change. Taken as a whole, the ethics assignments and reflective engagement of students produced gains in critical thinking and reflective action, along with resistance from some students policing disciplinary boundaries of the course, opening space for motivating conversations about the syllabus in the context of the larger engineering program. The presentation concludes with some lessons learned related to design of assignments, motivation of social justice topics, scaffolding for specific social justice concepts and terminology that may be new to students, challenges of transforming an over packed curriculum, and how student resistance to topics perceived as "not engineering" can be a positive learning opportunity.