2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This complete research paper explores how first-year students at four different institutions understood equitable infrastructure at the beginning and end of a first year, first-semester course in 2024. This paper compares and contrasts different models of teaching equitable infrastructure topics in these first-year courses and evaluates their impact on students.

While technical outcomes related to infrastructure, such as highway design or water system design, are taught most commonly in civil engineering programs, we all experience the built environment as users. Thus, the built environment – “infrastructure” – provides a jumping off point for all students, regardless of intended major, to begin developing a socio-technical perspective and understanding of the inequities that have been built into our engineered systems.

In all four courses, students completed a concept map activity focused on equitable infrastructure during the first week of class and again at the end of the term. These concept maps were analyzed using standard metrics of depth and connectivity, and they were compared using an evaluation rubric to identify the types of concepts that were expected to be included, based on definitions of equitable infrastructure that are commonly endorsed by professionals.

The paper offers insights into the efficacy of different approaches to integrating equitable infrastructure concepts into first-year courses, reflections on student outcomes, and suggestions for faculty to effectively and efficiently introduce students to these topics. Our goal in sharing this work is to inspire discussion within the engineering community about how faculty and departments across the U.S. can address equity and infrastructure in courses and curricula on their own campuses. The paper originally was submitted in January 2025. In revising, we have added an Appendix that discusses conditions in April 2025, which represent an abrupt change in national conditions related to DEIJ topics as compared to Fall 2024 when the teaching activities were conducted.