2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Introduction
In this paper, we will share experiences of students who are part of the first cohort of a new engineering program at a liberal arts university. The narratives shared in the paper have been collected as part of a reflection seminar in which all students enrolled in the program participate. One of the seminar's goals is to provide space for students to integrate what they are learning in their liberal arts courses and more broadly, their university experiences with what they are learning in their engineering coursework and experiences (like internships). In an attempt to create a student-centered body of knowledge that initiates the dissolution of the techno-social dualism prevalent in engineering education, the narratives fall under two broad themes: what do liberal arts bring to engineering, and what does engineering bring to the liberal arts?

Context
Students enrolled in the undergraduate engineering program, developed around the intellectual theme of "human-centered" engineering, take 15 courses as part of the university's liberal arts core. The content areas of these courses include arts, cultural diversity, history, literature, mathematics, natural science, philosophy, social sciences, theology, and writing. The students also complete coursework to graduate with a B.S. in General Engineering. The narratives we seek to share in this paper are from the first cohort of students enrolled in the program who are currently in their sophomore year. All students in the program participate in a weekly 1-hour reflection seminar throughout their time in the program.

Purpose or Goal
A voice often missing from work promoting the integration of liberal art and engineering is that of students experiencing such integration in their college education. Also, the work proposed here provides an interesting and new perspective from individuals who might not have necessarily experienced traditional conceptions and practices of engineering, which are often artificially separated from societal contexts and responsibility.

Approach
In one of the sessions of the reflection seminar, students created a word cloud in response to the two questions within the context of becoming human-centered engineers: what do liberal arts bring to engineering; and what does engineering bring to the liberal arts? The instructor discussed submitting an abstract to the ASEE LEES division to share the students' experiences with the goals described above, and a majority of the students expressed interest in co-authoring the paper. In the following sessions (in November and December), the student co-authors are populating a shared document with their personal experiences relating to the themes that came up in the word cloud. These themes include perspective, reflection, creativity, empathy, balance, and humanity for aspects that liberal arts bring to engineering. Themes such as technical knowledge, critical thinking, problem-solving, truth, technology, and cooperation came up for engineering's contributions to the liberal arts.