ASEE Workshop: The Social Conscious and Design Decision Making

Juval Racelis, Wentworth Institute of Technology
Gloria Ma, Wentworth Institute of Technology
James McCusker, Wentworth Institute of Technology

Multipurpose Room, Beatty Hall
10:15 am-11:30 pm

One of the tasks that engineering design education is to ensure students to have a strong understanding of their customers and environments.  They must understand the context of their decision-making and how it impacts people in diverse and inclusive communities.  This requires students to develop sensitivity regarding issues of race, gender, religion, nationality, age, physical ability, and much more. 

Under a funded EPIC project, a team of engineering and humanities/social science faculty, as well as Wentworth staff specializing in social diversity developed a set of socially-conscious design exercises in the past two years. These exercises are designed to be completed within a single lecture (50~75 minutes) and could be facilitated by a variety of instructors. Several iterations had already been made through pilot study with senior design classes and focus groups. The pilot study shows positive feedback that these exercises help students understand their design environment and identify possible prejudices before they are an issue; they also help create a more globally aware student, ready to be a positive citizen in society. In addition, an assessment tool is under development for ABET accrediting: ABET Outcome 2 (An ability to apply engineering design to produce solutions that meet specified needs with consideration of public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors).

With this workshop faculty/staff will learn how to use the designed exercises to help students’ aware social conscious impact on design decision making.

Juval V. Racelis earned his PhD in Applied Linguistics with a concentration Second Language Writing and TESOL. In his teaching, he focuses on the writing development needs of students from multilingual and diverse backgrounds. His research focuses on writing program development and pedagogical innovations in composition courses.

Gloria Ma is a Professor in School of Engineering at Wentworth Institute of Technology. Her research interests are dynamics and system modeling, project-based engineering design, and robotics in manufacturing. She is actively involved in community services of prompting STEM to girls.

James R. McCusker is an Associate Professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology in the Department of Electrical Engineering. Since joining Wentworth in 2010, he has been heavily involved with an array of interdisciplinary design courses that range from introductory to capstone courses.

A special thanks to Dr. Aaron Carpenter for his help in the creation of this workshop.