Unusual Programs is an occasional collection from The Dialog U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to instructing.
Title after all:
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 on the whole – 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 automotive, which retains its pace fixed, or the thermostat in a home that regulates temperature.
I needed to know whether or not engineers might deal with society and social phenomena as methods within the engineering sense. That means, college students and researchers might mathematically mannequin and even simulate these phenomena utilizing computer systems.
Management methods engineering gives a set of highly effective evaluation and design instruments. I needed to know whether or not my college students and I might apply these strategies to issues akin to policymaking to assist tackle societal issues.
What does the course discover?
On this course, college students study basic methods idea ideas, akin to block diagrams, suggestions loops and discrete-time dynamics. They apply these ideas to mathematically mannequin and analyze social methods.
Within the class, I discuss with the scholars about human rights. We take into consideration how this highly effective thought applies to social methods. This methods framework helps us method 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 akin to illness epidemics, the viral unfold of concepts, the tragedy of the commons and homelessness, amongst others.
Importantly, they study that some social phenomena might be methodically studied and engineered, in a quantifiable method. For instance, they will use numbers and information to experiment and consider how introducing vaccines impacts illness unfold.
By the top of the course, college students acquire a deeper understanding of the connection between engineering rules 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 study all through the engineering curriculum can immediately serve the widespread good.
What’s a important lesson from the course?
The course is a concrete step towards instructing engineering and science college students that engineering has extra to supply to society than its direct functions. College students study {that a} partnership between the humanities and engineering shouldn’t be solely attainable however strongly fascinating for the development of the widespread good.
What supplies does the course function?
There isn’t any one textbook that offers with all of the matters 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, initiatives and numerical simulation code.
Many engineers use instruments in engineering to assist folks and communities.
What’s going to the course put together college students to do?
The course goals to organize college students to use widespread engineering instruments akin 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 robust methodology for understanding social points and assessing how numerous insurance policies have an effect on human rights.
My aim is to supply engineering college students who can meaningfully contribute to policymaking through the use of engineering instruments to evaluate the results of social and financial insurance policies.
