Engineering Studies

From Social Optimization to Interconnected Systems: The “Systems Approach” as Technological Imagination in Japan, 1960s–80s

 
A work-in-progress by Yize Hu, PhD candidate in history of science and technology at Johns Hopkins University (USA). This is a chapter draft from Yize's forthcoming dissertation.
Commentary from Cyrus Mody, Maastricht University (Netherlands).
 
 

In it for the long haul: Negotiating interdisciplinary “culture change” in engineering education reform.
 
A work-in-progress by Annie Patrick, Matthew Wisnioski, and Lisa McNair, Virginia Tech (USA).
Commentary by Caitlyn Wyle, University of Virginia (USA).
 
Abstract
How do engaged STS scholars and engineering educators work together over an extended period to make change? In 2015, the National Science Foundation created the Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) initiative to address persistent challenges in engineering education. A distinguishing feature of RED was its focus on “culture change” via interdisciplinary teams that brought social scientists and engineering education researchers into long-term departmental planning with the intention of creating sustainable, evidence-based, and reproducible results. In this study we analyze what happened when we translated this complex national imperative into local practice at our university. Focusing on the groundwork of critical participation, we reconstruct how we enacted culture change through visible and invisible negotiations. We draw on six years of documents, interviews, and ethnographic observations to show how interdisciplinary engineering education reform begins with different, often unstated, perspectives about culture change. We then trace how these meanings and practices evolved across time along with transformations in identities, departmental structures and power relations, and our own strategies of intervention. We demonstrate that culture change is a crucial but elusive concept for both engaged STS scholars and engineering educators, and that attending to its negotiations can reveal how change can be foreclosed, why efforts fail and succeed, and how projects can be revitalized and sustained.

“Balance Work” on the Bleeding Edge: Women Engineers Managing Precarity in the Semiconductor Industry
Sarah Appelhans, PhD, Bucknell University
Comment:  Amy Slaton, Drexel University

Johannes Lenhard and Ann Johnson, "Systems Thinking and the Mainframe Culture of Prediction." Chapter five from their forthcoming book, Prediction as Practice and Culture.
 
Commentary from Davis Baird, professor of philosophy at Clark University.
 
Click the link below to download the book's table of contents, introduction, and fifth chapter.

“Engineering Studies in the Real World”  
This session explores where, why, and with what impacts engineering studies is being practiced outside of the academy. We will hear from panelists who pursue history, philosophy, ethnography as engaged practices in the investigation of engineering failures, NASA decision-making, and issues of ethics and responsibility at the National Academy of Engineering. We especially encourage others practicing engineering studies beyond the academy to join us. 
Panelists

• Julie Mark Cohen, Independent Scholar
• Zachary Pirtle, NASA
• Courtney Hill, National Academy of Engineering

Moderator

• Marie Stettler Kleine, Colorado School of Mines

*Note Special Time*
Joint meeting with the History of Technology Working Group
Ryan Hearty, Johns Hopkins University
"Monitoring Water Quality in US Rivers in the 1950 and 1960s: information, communication, and applied sciences"

TBA

A discussion with Jessica M. Smith of her forthcoming book in the Engineering Studies Series of MIT Press, Extracting Accountability: Engineers and Corporate Social Responsibility (MIT Press, 2021). Comments from Rider Foley (University of Virginia) and Thomas De Pree (University of New Mexico and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute).
 
Please read chapter 3 for the discussion (attached). Or, to download the entire book, click here.

No meeting this month. Have a happy and restful June!
 

“ABET’s Errant Evaluators and the Limits of Accreditation as a Mode of Governance in Engineering Education”
Atsushi Akera (Rensselaer), Sarah Appelhans (U Albany), Rafael Burgos-Mirabal (U Mass Amherst), Alan Cheville (Bucknell), Thomas DuPree (Univ. New Mexico), Soheil Fatehiboroujeni (Cornell), Jennifer Karlin (Minnesota State, Mankato), Donna Riley (Purdue)
Commentator: Julia Williams, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology