2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

A recently formed department of engineering is offering a program entitled “Human Centered Engineering” as the only major it will offer. Having this unique and explicitly new kind of focus relative to most existing engineering programs (i.e., “human centered” as opposed to “mechanical”, “electrical”, or even “general” engineering) provides opportunities and risks. For example, program graduates may be—or may be perceived to be—better able to fulfill the ABET student outcome B5, “…understand ethical and professional responsibilities and the impact of technical and/or scientific solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts” yet less able to fulfill outcome B1, “…applying knowledge of mathematics and science and/or technical topics to areas relevant to the discipline”. The first cohort of students in the program are currently in their fourth year of study.
In this paper, the author (who is external to the institution being studied) will first overview the department’s curriculum and compare it to the most relevant peer programs found elsewhere. Next, the curriculum is analyzed in terms of its philosophical foundation as a multidisciplinary program. After that, data is presented on perceptions of the curriculum from the program's students. This data came from formal interviews. Specific research questions for this portion of the paper are: 1) What are the perceived benefits and drawbacks of an interdisciplinary, human-centered engineering program?, 2) What topics, courses, and practices are perceived as the most and least valuable?, and 3) In what ways is it perceived that program graduates will graduate with advantage and with disadvantage?