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Work In Progress - Building Empathy without Community Partners

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Conference

2024 ASEE North Central Section Conference

Location

Kalamazoo, Michigan

Publication Date

March 22, 2024

Start Date

March 22, 2024

End Date

March 23, 2024

Page Count

8

DOI

10.18260/1-2--45650

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/45650

Download Count

12

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Paper Authors

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Aja Rachel Bettencourt-Mccarthy University of Cincinnati Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-4944-5097

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Aja Bettencourt-McCarthy is the Science & Engineering Global Services Librarian at the University of Cincinnati. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Cincinnati, Aja was the STEM Instruction Librarian at the University of Kentucky Libraries and the Head of Public Services at the Oregon Institute of Technology Library. Aja earned an MLIS degree from the University of Washington and a Bachelor of Arts & Sciences in French and Community and Regional Development from UC Davis.

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Matthew Sleep University of Cincinnati

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Matthew Sleep is a Lecturer in the First-Year Program at the University of Kentucky. Prior to the University of Kentucky, Matthew was an associate professor of civil engineering at Oregon Institute of Technology. Matthew received his PhD at Virginia Tec

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Abstract

Project-based learning is core to many first-year engineering, engineering design, and engineering capstone courses. Ideally, students in courses that use project-based learning work on real-world projects that are relevant to their communities with a sponsor or outside partner who helps to guide the work and assess deliverables. By working with a community partner or client, students practice incorporating outside perspectives and empathy into their designs. Realistically, a variety of constraints including time, location, class size, and workload prevent faculty from developing community partnerships/clients for all their student projects.

This paper will discuss ways to use tools like personas in combination with secondary research to mimic many of the benefits associated with community partnerships. We provide suggestions for partnerships with campus units, discuss the impact of these tools in one civil engineering course, and explore areas for future research. Examples of defining and exploring community partners in these courses will be presented.

Bettencourt-Mccarthy, A. R., & Sleep, M. (2024, March), Work In Progress - Building Empathy without Community Partners Paper presented at 2024 ASEE North Central Section Conference, Kalamazoo, Michigan. 10.18260/1-2--45650

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