2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Current research in engineering education emphasizes the need for undergraduate students to deepen their understanding of the complex ethical issues that emerge from interactions between technologies, society, and the environment. Unfortunately, undergraduate engineering education typically focuses on technical skills to the exclusion of sociocultural concerns. As a result, there is a pressing need for students to develop sociotechnical perspectives that pull together technical, social, and cultural understandings to address contemporary problems of human and environmental welfare. Research indicates a single course on these topics is insufficient and that students need sustained engagement with sociotechnical perspectives throughout their studies. This work-in-progress paper will present the results of a new program that we have created at our institution that provides that kind of deep and sustained engagement.

The Engineering Just Futures (EJF) Fellowship Program provided a group of 12 undergraduate student fellows a set of learning experiences that address social, cultural, and environmental dimensions of engineering and technological design. During the 2024-2025 academic year, those fellows participated in two main program components. The first was a sequence of seminars (5 per semester) that introduced students to frameworks and perspectives that illustrate how just futures can be pursued in professional work related to technology. The seminars included interactions with guest speakers as well as engagement with case studies, design problems, and ethical issues. The second component was a yearlong project in which interdisciplinary teams of 3 fellows worked with a community partner on a complex problem that included technical, social, cultural, and environmental dimensions.

To study the impacts of this program on participating students, we are utilizing a longitudinal qualitative case study methodology, drawing upon multiple data sources to create thick descriptions of the fellows’ learning experiences and changes in their thinking. We are gathering artifacts created by students during the program (e.g., reflections on their learning experiences, project milestones), participant interviews (at the end of each semester), and responses to questionnaires. For this work-in-progress, we will share preliminary results based on our analysis of the questionnaire and interview data to address the following research questions:

1. During the EJF program, what changes occur in the ways that fellows think about the interactions between technology, society, culture, and the environment?

2. How do EJF Fellows utilize sociotechnical perspectives when carrying out their EJF projects?