Cultivating Public Responsibility in Engineering Students

"Unfortunately, a 2014 study by Cech found that engineering students’ sense of public responsibility decreased over the course of their education.

“In a sample of students at four institutions, I found that over the course of their engineering education, these engineering students became less invested in their public welfare responsibilities as engineers. That is the opposite of what we would want from an engineering program. We want to train engineering students to understand and respect their professional responsibilities to the public,” Cech said. “Engineering as a profession holds the privilege of a monopoly on entire areas of knowledge and practice in the social world. Processes of social closure prevent people without training from accessing jobs in those privileged positions. In exchange, engineers, as part of this profession, must recognize and live up to their public welfare responsibilities.”

In response to these findings, Cech and University of Michigan engineering and education associate professor Cynthia Finelli, are embarking on a three-year project funded by the National Science Foundation to further understand the extent to which public responsibility is part of the professional identity of engineers and to design a master’s level course around the public welfare responsibilities of engineers." (Good Work, October 2021)

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