2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

CASE STUDY: Project-based integration of societal context with engineering communication and computational thinking in an upper-level civil and environmental engineering course

Undergraduate engineering courses excel at teaching students foundational engineering concepts but the integration of these concepts with their broader societal context, and the communication of these concepts to different audiences is often lacking. To address this gap, we re-designed a third-year civil and environmental engineering course to address three target areas: 1) strengthen students’ problem solving, data analysis and data visualization skills, and confidence using computational tools; 2) increase students’ awareness and understanding of engineering in a societal context; and 3) develop students’ ability to communicate their expertise to a range of audiences, including peer technical experts, policy makers, and the broader public.

In this case study, we present the design of an assigned project for which students are asked to make recommendations on whether a coal-fired power plant should be decommissioned or remain in operation. This project requires students to visualize and analyze real data from their assigned power plant using R, building on skills they learned in a second-year civil engineering course. The data analysis includes evaluating impacts to local and global environments, human health and risk, and economic, consumer, and social considerations. Students first communicate their analysis and recommendation in the form of a technical report intended for a supervisor or other technical experts. To build up to this report, we developed a set of scaffolded and integrated programming and writing homework assignments. After the technical report, students are then tasked with communicating their recommendation in the form of two public-facing documents: 1) a policy memo that has a target audience of local decision makers (e.g., county and city officials local to the power plant); and 2) an Op-Ed intended for a local newspaper.

Students were surveyed at the beginning and end of each semester to assess attitudes around programming, communication, and engineering in a societal context. Key outcomes from the Fall 2024 end-of-semester surveys demonstrate that students felt the course improved their understanding in all three targeted areas: 1) confidence using computational tools for data analysis, data visualization, and problem solving (18/25 moderately to extremely confident); 2) awareness and understanding of engineering in a societal context (23/24 moderately to extremely well); and 3) confidence in ability to communicate to a range of audiences (24/24 moderately to extremely confident).

Authors

Dr. Megan L. Matthews University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign [biography]

Megan is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her work involves developing multiscale computational models to explore the impacts of a changing environment on plants and to identify engineering strategies for improving plant development and growth. She has used mechanistic and data-driven approaches to develop models describing plant processes at regulatory, metabolic, and physiological scales. Megan earned her bachelor's, master's, and doctorate in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University.
Dr. Sotiria Koloutsou-Vakakis http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7658-6517 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [biography]

Dr. Sotiria Koloutsou-Vakakis holds a Diploma in Surveying Engineering (National Technical University of Athens, Greece), a M.A. in Geography (University of California, Los Angeles), and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Environmental Engineering (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign). She is a Senior Lecturer and Research Scientist in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her main interests are in air quality, environmental policy, and supporting student learning and professional preparation.
Dr. Ashlynn S. Stillwell http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6781-6480 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [biography]

Dr. Ashlynn S. Stillwell is an Associate Professor and the Elaine F. and William J. Hall Excellence Faculty Scholar in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on creating sustainable water and energy systems in a policy-relevant context. She earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Missouri (2006), and an M.S. in Environmental and Water Resources Engineering (2010), M.P.Aff in Public Affairs (2010), and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (2013) from The University of Texas at Austin.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025