2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The problem-solving skills of engineers are necessary to address modern, global, sociotechnical issues (e.g., accessibility, climate change, health/pandemic, racism). Undergraduate engineering students, particularly women, people of color, and individuals with disabilities, are often motivated by these sociotechnical challenges to pursue engineering. However, technical learning and social issues are frequently separated in current forms of undergraduate engineering education, and engineering students may learn to devalue social aspects of engineering as a result. Integrating social issues, such as issues of equity, diversity, inclusion, and justice, into an engineering education may privilege the experiential knowledge of a wider set of students and empower a new generation of engineers to address pressing sociotechnical issues. In this study, we synthesize examples of such integration from prior literature through a narrative literature review, beginning with seminal works and using a snowballing method to include other articles. We consider themes across the prior literature that address our research questions: How might social and technical aspects of engineering be effectively integrated in undergraduate engineering education and what are the benefits of such integration? Our synthesis may support engineering educators and engineering institutions to better integrate sociotechnical issues into their coursework. Particularly, our work provides insight into methods for addressing the misconception that engineering is purely technical. The larger goal of the work is to empower more students to respond to global, sociotechnical issues through engineering and to increase representation and inclusion in engineering.