| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Cultural Practices for Supporting Ethical Engineering

Page history last edited by Chandra Turpen 2 days, 7 hours ago

Study Context: The STS Program at UMD 

The “Science, Technology and Society” (STS) program sponsored by the College of Engineering at the University of Maryland College Park. Through the dedication of its directors, instructors, and other support partners, this program seeks to counteract the narrow focus on technical preparation many students encounter within engineering and other STEM programs. The program focuses on cultivating macro-ethical and social justice orientations towards the study and design of socio-technical systems. STS students take two years of ‘colloquium’ and ‘practicum’ courses that are designed to provide students with foundations and field experiences focused on service learning and community engagement. The program cultivates students’ critical understanding of and engagement with socio-technical systems through the practice of various systems thinking skills, like “locating power in systems” and “looking for ethics in artifacts.” It encourages students to take a sociocultural approach to knowledge construction, with a focus on valuing multiple perspectives, questioning the status quo, and recognizing who might benefit or be harmed by socio-technical systems and innovations. 

 

Project Description: Our Ongoing Research Studies

This NSF-funded research study explores whether and how extended immersion in cultural practices of the University of Maryland STS program supports students’ macro-ethical reasoning about the world and their personal and professional responsibility within it. Our approach to this research study integrates “outsider” (researcher leads’) and “insider” (participating students’ and undergraduate research fellows’) observations of and reflections on culturally salient events, activities, and artifacts to create ethnographic accounts of which cultural practices are consequential for shaping engineering students’ macro-ethical reasoning and identity. In this study, we are following students longitudinally over two years of the STS program and are developing accounts of how individuals do and do not take up STS cultural practices and bring elements of those practices into other settings. Data sources include ethnographic observations collected in STS courses, video-recorded interviews with participating students about their backgrounds and experiences in the program, and video-recorded focus group interviews in which students collaboratively reasoned about complex design scenarios.  

 

Publications & Presentations

 

J. Radoff, C. Turpen, D. Tomblin, N. F. Mogul, A. Agrawal, and A. Elby (2023). “Shaping the macro-ethical reasoning of engineering students through deliberate cultural practices.” American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition. Baltimore, MD. June 25-28, 2023.

 

F. N. Abdurrahman, S. Chudamani, C. Turpen, J. Radoff, A. Elby, and D. Tomblin (2023). “The Amazon Effect: A Case Study of Corporate Influence on Student Macro-Ethical Reasoning.” American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition. Baltimore, MD. June 25-28, 2023.

 

N. Mogul and D. Tomblin (2022). "STS Postures: Reuniting the Mind and Body of STEM Students." ESOCITE/4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) Joint Meeting. Cholula, Mexico. Dec. 7-10, 2022.

 

J. Radoff, C. Turpen, F. Abdurrahman, D. Tomblin, S. Chudamani, D. Chen, and A. Agrawal (2022) "Neoliberalism at Work Here: STEM student alignments with and pivots away from mainstream U.S. socio-technical imaginaries." ESOCITE/4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) Joint Meeting. Cholula, Mexico. Dec. 7-10, 2022.

 

C. Turpen, J. Radoff, K. Rahman, S. Bikki, P. K. Adkins, and H. Sangha (2022). “Partnering with engineering students to unearth cultural practices within a Science, Technology, and Society (STS) program.” 2022 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition. Minneapolis, MN. June 26-29, 2022.


J. Radoff, C. Turpen, F. Abdurrahman, D. Tomblin, S. Chudamani, D. Chen, A. Agrawal (2022). “Examining the narrow and expansive socio-technical imaginaries influencing college students' collaborative reasoning.” 2022 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition. Minneapolis, MN. June 26-29, 2022. Best Paper Award in Liberal Education/Engineering & Society (LEES).

 

J. Radoff, C. Turpen and F. Abdurrahman (2022). “Supporting macro-ethical reasoning in college students’ collaborative design work.” National Association for Research in Science Teaching Annual Conference, March 27-30, 2022.

 

D. Tomblin and N. Mogul (2020). "STS Postures: responsible innovation and research in undergraduate STEM education." Journal of Responsible Innovation, 7(1), pp. 117-127. 

 

Acknowledgment of Support 

This project has been supported through funding from NSF, "Cultural Practices for Supporting Ethical Engineering: The Role of Immersive Engineering Subcommunities."

  • NSF REE #1916929
  • Project duration: 09/01/2019 – 08/31/2024 
  • Principal Investigator: Chandra Turpen (formerly Ayush Gupta).
  • Co-principal Investigators: Andrew Elby and David Tomblin 
  • Additional senior personnel: Jennifer Radoff and Fatima Abdurrahman  
  • Undergraduate Research Fellows: Kate Adkins, Amol Agrawal, Samshritha Bikki, Ariana Capati, Caitlyn Chan, Danjing Chen, Sona Chudamani, Madison Crossley, Adaugo Emerson, Sophia Hrabinski, Cornelius On, Dalton Pang, Keeron Rahman, Harkirat Sangha, Angela Wong, and Daniel Zhu.

Disclaimer: Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.