Unusual Programs is an occasional sequence from The Dialog U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to educating.
Title in fact:
Engineering Techniques for the Frequent Good
What prompted the thought for the course?
As a management methods researcher, I’ve lengthy felt that management methods – and methods science generally – have a lot to contribute to fixing social issues.
Management methods make different methods behave in some desired method. Consider the cruise management in a automobile, which retains its velocity fixed, or the thermostat in a home that regulates temperature.
I wished to know whether or not engineers may deal with society and social phenomena as methods within the engineering sense. That method, college students and researchers may mathematically mannequin and even simulate these phenomena utilizing computer systems.
Management methods engineering presents a set of highly effective evaluation and design instruments. I wished to know whether or not my college students and I may apply these strategies to issues equivalent to policymaking to assist tackle societal issues.
What does the course discover?
On this course, college students be taught elementary methods principle ideas, equivalent to block diagrams, suggestions loops and discrete-time dynamics. They apply these ideas to mathematically mannequin and analyze social methods.
Within the class, I speak with the scholars about human rights. We take into consideration how this highly effective thought applies to social methods. This methods framework helps us strategy social justice points in a methodical, mathematical method.
In Raúl Ordóñez’s class on the College of Dayton, college students take engineering ideas and apply them to societal points.
Shawn Robinson/College of Dayton
College students use simulation software program to mannequin methods equivalent to illness epidemics, the viral unfold of concepts, the tragedy of the commons and homelessness, amongst others.
Importantly, they be taught that some social phenomena will be methodically studied and engineered, in a quantifiable method. For instance, they’ll use numbers and information to experiment and consider how introducing vaccines impacts illness unfold.
By the tip of the course, college students achieve a deeper understanding of the connection between engineering ideas and instruments and human rights and society.
Why is that this course related now?
This course helps bridge the hole between engineering and social sciences by bringing ideas from human rights and social justice to engineering college students. It teaches them how the highly effective engineering instruments they be taught all through the engineering curriculum can straight serve the widespread good.
What’s a vital lesson from the course?
The course is a concrete step towards educating engineering and science college students that engineering has extra to supply to society than its direct purposes. College students be taught {that a} partnership between the humanities and engineering is just not solely doable however strongly fascinating for the development of the widespread good.
What supplies does the course characteristic?
There isn’t any one textbook that offers with all of the subjects on this course, though the e-book “Humanitarian Engineering: Advancing Technology for Sustainable Development,” third version, by Kevin M. Passino, is a really helpful useful resource. I’ve largely developed my very own supplies, together with my set of lecture notes, tasks and numerical simulation code.
Many engineers use instruments in engineering to assist individuals and communities.
What is going to the course put together college students to do?
The course goals to arrange college students to use widespread engineering instruments equivalent to differential equations, alerts and methods, methods evaluation, mathematical fashions and numerical simulation to the evaluation of social issues, with an emphasis on human rights implications.
It additionally introduces social modeling as a strong methodology for understanding social points and assessing how varied insurance policies have an effect on human rights.
My purpose is to supply engineering college students who can meaningfully contribute to policymaking through the use of engineering instruments to evaluate the implications of social and financial insurance policies.