2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engineering departments have begun to prioritize more computational methods in their disciplines. Across engineering schools, computational methods are taught differently, but traditionally without context. In this study, we have revised an introductory engineering computing course such that students take up social, economic, and political contexts as they are introduced to coding and statistics. These contextual elements take three forms. The first is a weekly assignment where students read, reflect, and discuss various equity and justice-themed articles. The second is four weeklong projects over the semester that require a sociotechnical perspective to complete. Lastly, students complete an open-ended final project that requires attention to equity dimensions in each project step. This paper will examine the students’ responses to the weekly discussion reading on environmental racism.

In this study, we focus on one week in which students read and reflected on two articles. One was an article from The Atlantic, titled “A New EPA Report Shows that Environmental Racism is Real” (Newkirk II, 2018). The other was an article from Vox titled, “There’s a clear fix to helping Black communities fight pollution” (Ramirez, 2021). The majority of students in this study are first-years enrolled in the school of engineering. The study takes place at a medium-sized, private, predominantly white institution in the northeast region of the US. Responses were collected across two years of this sociotechnical engineering revision. This study is not intended to compare the two years but to understand the breadth of ideas and responses students have in response to reading and reflecting on the article. Notably, two class sections of the course were revised in year one of the projects (2021), and all five sections of the course were revised in year two (2022). Each section is taught by a different engineering instructor. This study is not intended to compare students across different sections. Instead, through this qualitative thematic analysis, we attend to the different ways students take up and respond to social, political, and economic dimensions that have to do with the environment.