Teaching Students to Incorporate Community Perspective into Environmental Engineering Problem Definition through Iterative Conceptual Site Models
- Conference
- Location
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Minneapolis, MN
- Publication Date
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August 23, 2022
- Start Date
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June 26, 2022
- End Date
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June 29, 2022
- Conference Session
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Community Engagement Division Technical Session 2 - Community Engagement without Frontiers
- Page Count
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17
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--40516
- Permanent URL
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https://strategy.asee.org/40516
- Download Count
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285
Paper Authors
Michelle Schwartz The University of Texas at Arlington
Michelle Schwartz is a Ph.D. candidate in Civil Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. She received her B.S. in Environmental Engineering from Colorado School of Mines in 2017 and her M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Colorado School of Mines in 2018. Michelle’s previous research covered numerous topics including the effects of temperature on soil moisture probes, middle school students’ perceptions on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and natural gas leak detection methods. Her current research is on how contaminant perception of artisanal and small-scale mining at different spatial scales influences environmental response and how engineers can work with that information to co-develop socio-technical responses to environmental pollution.
Kathleen Smits The University of Texas at Arlington
Kate Smits is a professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). Prior to UTA, Kate was an associate professor at Colorado School of Mines from 2010- 2018 and the U.S. Air Force Academy from 2004-07. Proudly she served as a civil engineer in the U.S. Air Force, including various deployments and is currently a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserves. Kate’s research interests are focused on energy and the environment with applications to natural gas leakage, the clean up of contaminated soils and waterways, and the storage of renewable energy. Much of her research looks toward the development of social-technical systems and models to better understand such systems. Kate earned her B.S. in environmental engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy, M.S. in civil engineering from the University of Texas, Austin, and PhD in environmental science and engineering from Colorado School of Mines.
Jessica Smith Colorado School of Mines
Jessica M. Smith is Professor in the Engineering, Design & Society Department at the Colorado School of Mines and Director of the Humanitarian Engineering and Science graduate program. She is an anthropologist with two major research areas: 1) the sociocultural dynamics of extractive and energy industries, with a focus on corporate social responsibility, social justice, labor, and gender and 2) engineering education, with a focus on socioeconomic class and social responsibility. She is the author of Extracting Accountability: Engineers and Corporate Social Responsibility (MIT Press, 2021) and Mining Coal and Undermining Gender: Rhythms of Work and Family in the American West (Rutgers University Press, 2014), which were funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the British Academy. In 2016 the National Academy of Engineering recognized her Corporate Social Responsibility course as a national exemplar in teaching engineering ethics. Professor Smith holds a PhD in Anthropology and a certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of Michigan and bachelor’s degrees in International Studies, Anthropology and Latin American Studies from Macalester College.
Thomas Phelan United States Air Force Academy
Rosalie O'Brien
Abstract
In environmental engineering site remediation projects, community perception of environmental and health risks can influence a project’s scope and design. Therefore, community engagement is critical to shaping an engineer’s definition of an environmental problem. However, lower-level undergraduate engineering curricula rarely address the incorporation of community input into environmental engineering problem definition, as environmental engineering coursework tends to utilize pre-defined problems to develop and assess technical knowledge and skills. Upper-level courses that do include community participation in environmental engineering design tend to be reflective, having students evaluate the social impact of a pre-defined problem or completed project using secondary sources. In contrast to these dominant approaches, we argue that undergraduate curricula must teach students to proactively seek out and incorporate more holistic contextual information and community input in the problem definition stage of projects.
In this paper, we propose a strategy for using conceptual site models (CSMs), a commonly used tool in environmental site remediation, to integrate community inputs into problem definition for site remediation projects. Through a methodology of iterative CSM design and community engagement, we explore how different stakeholders can influence the development of CSMs, thereby enhancing an engineer’s understanding of a given project’s social and environmental setting. We implemented this methodology with a cohort of undergraduate students from different universities during a two-week-long summer field session experience. Students created CSMs based on their technical understanding of a historical mine site, and then updated their CSMs after a site visit that included members of different stakeholder groups. We asked students to compare their CSMs to the ideas and values of other stakeholders and describe how these perspectives changed their understanding of the contaminated sites. This module provides a hands-on example of how to incorporate local knowledge and concerns into problem definition, a skill that is necessary for developing environmental engineering projects that are socially just. Our method can also be easily adopted by educators into their own classrooms as a method of educating undergraduate students about engaging community members during the problem definition stage of projects.
Schwartz, M., & Smits, K., & Smith, J., & Phelan, T., & O'Brien, R. (2022, August), Teaching Students to Incorporate Community Perspective into Environmental Engineering Problem Definition through Iterative Conceptual Site Models Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40516
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