Social responsibility in engineering education and practice: Alignments, mismatches, and future directions

Abstract

The growing literature examining engineering students' attitudes and learning about social responsibility focuses on the professional and personal dimensions of engineers' responsibilities [1]4]. Knowledge of how engineering students understand the contested and controversial field of corporate social responsibility (CSR), including its intersections with those other domains of responsibility and the potential tensions that exist among them, is less well developed. This paper addresses that gap by analyzing the first year of research assessing the introduction of CSR-themed content into courses at three universities: Colorado School of Mines, Virginia Tech, and Marietta College. In this paper we offer a preliminary analysis of the pre- and post-module survey responses of over 600 students in targeted mining engineering, petroleum engineering, design, and liberal arts courses, tracking changes in the students' knowledge, attitudes and skills about CSR and its relation to engineering. Among the courses, we identify differences in the extent to which the classes of students: 1) improved in defining CSR and identifying historical trends in its development; 2) broadened their understanding of stakeholders to include oppositional groups; 3) believed that CSR would be relevant to their careers as engineers; and 4) considered that training in CSR had enhanced their interest in engineering ethics more broadly. We offer preliminary thoughts on the main causes of those differences, including course content and context, instructor background, and length and depth of the CSR modules. Finally, we conclude by tying our research back to the existing work on engineering students' attitudes and learning about social responsibility to consider the opportunities and pitfalls of integrating CSR into teaching and learning about social responsibility more generally.