2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Civic engagement is a cornerstone of our democracy and engineers must play a part in that engagement. This paper will discuss how the redesign of a Project Management for Engineers course embedded civic engagement in the course. In the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) Code of Ethics, a fundamental canon is to “hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public.” In order to satisfy or abide by this canon, I propose that engineering students must be civically engaged. As part of the redesign of the Project Management Course for Engineers, a project was required in the course that would be fully immersive experience with community and civic engagement. The project allowed students to engage in a civic activity and give back to the local community of the University of Miami (Girl Scout Engineering Day). The students were required in groups to lead, plan, manage and execute a series of 4 challenges for a group of 10-12 girl scouts. In addition, to providing a meaningful learning experience to engineering students it also addressed a need in K-12 Stem education to underserved girls. The girl scouts were given four challenges to complete using the engineering design process so that they would have an experience that they may not get in their communities. The activities needed to be fun and engaging to show the young girls that anyone can consider engineering. This paper will show the attitudes and perspectives of engineering students with regards to civic engagement and their role in that endeavor. The students were required to complete a final reflection of the experience along with their attitudes regarding civic engagement. Finally, the paper will offer insight of what should be included in engineering civically engaged courses to produce civic-minded engineers, including course content and reflections.