2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The fundamental role of civil infrastructure in helping to ameliorate or further exacerbate social inequities has become increasingly clear. In order to make more equitable decisions in how we plan, design, operate, and manage our infrastructure, civil engineers need to better understand the fundamental and ubiquitous role of infrastructure in society. At the same time, civil engineers need to better communicate to the public the technical and economic challenges and tradeoffs inherent in infrastructure decision-making. This interdependent learning - among communities and engineers - will result in a more complete understanding of the complexity of these interrelationships. Offering undergraduate courses that address equity and infrastructure is one way of beginning to bridge this gap.

This paper describes three first-year courses that address equity and infrastructure at three different types of institutions. Institution 1, a medium-size private university, offers a first year seminar to incoming students that is designed as a multidisciplinary exploration of infrastructure and equity. Fifteen of the 21 students in the class are civil engineering majors, an additional four are other engineering majors, and the remaining two are pursuing majors outside of engineering. One of the primary learning outcomes of the course is to differentiate the ways in which knowledge is constructed across multiple disciplines, so infrastructure’s impact on society is viewed through the lens of sociology, history, public health, economics, and engineering. Institution 2, a small, private liberal arts college, requires that first-semester students enroll in one of a wide variety of first-year seminars; this paper describes one of those, focused on urban infrastructure and equity as a subject for critical reading and writing. Five of the thirteen students are considering an engineering major. In addition to reading and writing focused outcomes, students are expected to explain how infrastructure impacts lives and communities in uneven ways with regard to equity and justice. Institution 3 is a large, land-grant university. A first-year 1-credit civil engineering seminar course touches on the topic of infrastructure equity through the lenses of engineering ethics and sustainability. Approximately half of the 53 students enrolled have declared a civil engineering major and the other half are engineering majors who have not yet declared a major. Equity topics are embedded in ethics and sustainability, which are two core learning objectives in the course.

A common activity related to understanding relationships between equity and infrastructure was given at the end of all three courses to provide a comparison of student perspectives. The paper will share information about the three courses and their contexts as well as reflections on student outcomes to inspire discussion within the civil engineering community about how faculty and departments across the U.S. can address equity and infrastructure in courses on their own campuses.