2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

NSF IUSE: Integrating Sociotechnical Issues in Electrical Engineering Starting with Circuits: Year 3

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session II

This NSF-funded Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) project aims to integrate sociotechnical issues into Introduction to Circuits, typically the first course in electrical engineering (EE) for undergraduate students. To prepare graduates for real-world problems, which are interdisciplinary and involve complex social impacts, instructors must help students address the sociotechnical nature of engineering. Accrediting organizations such as ABET stress the importance of sociotechnical issues and require undergraduate programs to consider global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors in student outcomes, as do licensing agencies such as the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) and professional societies such as IEEE.

However, many engineering instructors have been educated with a deep technical focus, and though many see the value of addressing sociotechnical issues, they have little experience outside of engineering and feel ill-equipped to integrate these topics in the curriculum. In this NSF-sponsored project, we aim to make it easier for engineering instructors to include sociotechnical issues in their Introduction to Circuits courses by developing modules with detailed instructional resources each emphasizing a different sociotechnical issue and leveraging fundamental circuits topics. This paper describes our activities during Year 3 of the project.

Authors

Dr. Susan M Lord http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2675-5626 University of San Diego [biography]

Susan Lord is Professor and Chair of Integrated Engineering at the University of San Diego. She received a BS from Cornell University in Materials Science and Engineering and Electrical Engineering (EE) and MS and PhD in EE from Stanford University. Her research focuses on the study and promotion of equity in engineering including student pathways and inclusive teaching. She has won best paper awards from the Journal of Engineering Education, IEEE Transactions on Education, and Education Sciences. Dr. Lord is a Fellow of the IEEE and ASEE and received the 2018 IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award. She is a coauthor of The Borderlands of Education: Latinas in Engineering. She is a co-Director of the National Effective Teaching Institute (NETI).
Dr. Cynthia J. Finelli http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9148-1492 University of Michigan [biography]

Dr. Cindy Finelli is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and David C. Munson, Jr. Professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan, where she also serves as a professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and a professor of Education. She was the founding director and graduate chair of the Engineering Education Research Program for ten years, and previously served as founding director of the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching in Engineering for twelve years. Her research focuses on advancing faculty adoption of evidence-based instruction, supporting students with neurodiversities, and promoting social responsibility through engineering coursework. Professor Finelli is a Fellow of both the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), and has held editorial roles with the Journal of Engineering Education, the European Journal of Engineering Education, and IEEE Transactions on Education.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026

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