Thanks to Peggy Layne at Virginia Tech for alerting me to this engineering course via the WEPAN listserv. Peggy is the Project Director of Virginia Tech's ADVANCE program, and you can learn more about ADVANCE in general here and here. Anyway, about this course - called "Engineering Cultures". It was developed by Dr. Gary Downey and Dr. Juan Lucena and has been taught for the past 10 years. Here's a description of the course:
The main goal of this course is to help engineers learn to work with people who define problems differently than they do. The course travels around the world, examining how what counts as an engineer and engineering knowledge has varied over time and from place to place. Students gradually become 'global engineers' by coming to recognize and value that they live and work in a world of diverse perspectives. Minimally, participants gain concrete strategies for understanding the cultural differences they will encounter on the job and for engaging in shared problem solving in the midst of those differences. When the course works best, it can help students figure out how and where to locate engineering problem solving in their lives while still holding onto their dreams. The title of the course is a pun: it both compares the cultures of engineers at different times and places and explores how engineers participate in and contribute to everyday cultural life.
Zuska says this is awesome and more engineering schools should be doing stuff like this. Engineers ARE problem solvers, they aren't supposed to be a club for nerdy immature boys. Every now and then, stuff like this gives me a glimmer of hope.
4:29:28 PM 
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