2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engagement in Practice: Building Community Engagement into a First-year Design-Build-Test Course

Presented at Engagement in Practice Lightning Round: Engineering with and for Community Partners

This paper presents a framework for community engagement and early findings from a first-year design-build-test course at a large university. The project work of this course centers on four workshops in which students and community members discuss their values, hopes, and concerns related to energy technology. Energy justice was a central topic, focusing on fission microreactors and fusion reactors. Students examined the historical context surrounding the development of nuclear technologies, including instances of disregard by engineering firms and government bureaucracies as they engaged with communities. They also learned nuclear engineering fundamentals and developed educational materials to share with community members.

To date, one workshop has been completed. This event took place over two hours on Zoom. Over twenty community members joined nine students and five facilitators. Participants were invited into individual reflection, breakout room conversations, and large group debriefs. Educational materials on fusion energy were shared, and participants discussed their values, beliefs, and perspectives on energy and fusion as an imagined energy source for their community. Participants shared positive initial feedback, calling the workshop “extremely respectful,” “informative,” and an “excellent” way to bring people together. To connect with community members, we worked with a university-run service-learning organization. Students also developed flyers and shared ads on social media.

Students prepared for community engagement by completing human subjects protection training, learning interview strategies, and making observations. They received training in respectful community engagement, focusing on identity and culture. Three workshops remain this semester. Our primary challenges are recruiting and managing idea-sharing during the virtual workshop. Future iterations of this course may feature earlier integration of educational materials like datasheets and VR-based tours of hypothetical facilities. Participants also need to be solicited sooner; one strategy to explore is establishing partnerships with local community organizations.

Authors

Dr. Katie Snyder University of Michigan [biography]

Dr. Snyder is a lecturer for the Program in Technical Communication at the University of Michigan. She teaches design, ethics, and technical communication as social justice to students in the College of Engineering.
Prof. Aditi Verma University of Michigan [biography]

Aditi Verma (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences at the University of Michigan. Aditi is broadly interested in how fission and fusion technologies specifically and energy systems broadly—and their institutional infrastructures—can be designed in more creative, participatory, and equitable ways. To this end, her research group at the University of Michigan works towards developing a more fundamental understanding of the early stages of the design process to improve design practice and pedagogy, and also improve the tools with which designers of complex sociotechnical systems work.
She was previously a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Prior to her appointment at the Belfer Center, Aditi worked at the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, her work, endorsed and funded by policymakers from the NEA member countries, focused on bringing epistemologies from the humanities and social sciences to academic and practitioner nuclear engineering, thus broadening their epistemic core. At the NEA, Aditi also led the establishment of the Global Forum on Nuclear Education, Science, Technology, and Policy.
Aditi holds undergraduate and doctoral degrees in Nuclear Science and Engineering from MIT. Her work, authored for academic as well as policymaking audiences, has been published in Nuclear Engineering and Design, Nature, Nuclear Technology, Design Studies, Journal of Mechanical Design, Issues in Science and Technology, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and Inkstick.
Aditi enjoys hiking with her dog, reading speculative fiction, and experimenting in the kitchen.

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