Engagement in Practice Paper developed for Engagement in Practice Session:
Engineers and Communities: Critical Reflections of Challenges, Opportunities, and Best (Worst) Practices of Engaging Each Other
Student engineers need both excellent technical training and critical skills to put their training to its best uses. At Colorado School of Mines we are experimenting with a series of learning experiences to help students use their technical skills thoughtfully and overcome technical instrumentalism, which we define as the idea that technical skills alone can solve all the practical problems that they encounter. In these experiences, students work with members of Colombian artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) communities and Colombian students to address geological hazards that endanger miners. This sequenced set of experiences was designed so that students would engage with communities to better understand the complex social, technical, and environmental risks that miners confront and then propose and, in some cases, develop projects to reduce those risks. In this paper we describe the first two phases of this experience. Further research on this learning experience will be necessary to understand its effects for all parties involved.
Elizabeth Reddy is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Division of Engineering, Design and Society at Colorado School of Mines. She is a social scientist, holding a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of California at Irvine.
Juan Lucena is Professor and Director of Humanitarian Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM). Juan obtained a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies (STS) from Virginia Tech and a MS in STS and BS in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). His books include Defending the Nation: U.S. Policymaking to Create Scientists and Engineers from Sputnik to the ‘War Against Terrorism’ (University Press of America, 2005), Engineering and Sustainable Community Development (Morgan &Claypool, 2010), and Engineering Education for Social Justice: Critical Explorations and Opportunities (Springer, 2013).
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