Student engagement with a humanitarian engineering pathway

ABSTRACT

The number of undergraduate degree programmes incorporating humanitarian engineering experiences and curriculum has increased significantly since the turn of the century. This paper describes a humanitarian engineering pathway embedded across all four years of an undergraduate engineering degree at an Australian university. Student participation in the pathway and their motivations were evaluated from quantitative enrolment data and anonymous surveys and compared to an overall student baseline. This found a higher percentage of students engaged in humanitarian engineering were female, domestic and involved in extra-curricular activities compared to the overall student baseline. Most students engaging with the pathway were motivated by opportunities to apply their engineering; some highlighting this was to have an impact on societal issues. Recommendations are made for research to further understand student engagement as well as suggestions for initiatives to address potential challenges as humanitarian engineering education continues to expand across Australasia.

KEYWORDS:

• Humanitarian engineering
• service-learning
• gender diversity

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the community partners and individuals who provided project opportunities, support and supervision to students during their studies. We thank all the students who have undertaken surveys.

Disclosure statement

The first author was a previous EWB-A paid staff member before commencing the research outlined here.

Additional information

Funding

The development of the Engineering for a Humanitarian Context course was supported by an Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching grant. The research work has been supported by an Australian Government PhD scholarship;Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education, Australian Government [Research Training Program];Office for Learning and Teaching [SD14-3802].

Notes on contributors

Jeremy Smith

Jeremy Smith is a Lecturer in the Research School of Engineering at the Australian National University.  He is a Fellow of Engineers Australia and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and in 2017 received an Award for Teaching Excellence from the Australian Awards for University Teaching education.

Andrea Mazzurco

Andrea Mazzurco is a Lecturer of Engineering Education in the new Engineering Practice Academy in the Faculty of Science, Engineering, and Technology at Swinburne University of Technology. Andrea's primary research interests focus on global engineering competency, humanitarian engineering, and moral development of engineers and engineering students.

Paul Compston

Paul Compston is a Professor in the Research School of Engineering at the Australian National University and Deputy Director for the Australian Research Council Training Centre for Automated Manufacture of Advanced Composites.  Paul is a Fellow of Engineers Australia and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.