Engineering Education in Perspective

Several excellent essays describing engineers as educators with social values and ideological commitments–left, right, and center–appear in the latest Technology and Culture. This journal, for those who don’t know it, may sound  narrowly academic but it frequently offers articles that are low on jargon and high on material of interest to practitioners and policy makers. This special issue on engineering education can prime the pump for new approaches to engineering education reform, and for some vital critical thinking on matters of race and identity in engineering, as well. For anyone who teaches humanities courses for engineering students, Matthew Wisnioski’s contribution, “‘Liberal Education Has Failed:” Reading Like an Engineer in 1960s America,” offers a fascinating backstory and more than a few constructive suggestions for sustaining that sometimes thankless pedagogical task. The fun may start, though, if we put it on our syllabi for just those courses…