Synopsis
The profession of engineering in the United States has historically served the status quo, feeding an ever-expanding materialistic and militaristic culture, remaining relatively unresponsive to public concerns, and without significant pressure for change from within. This book calls upon engineers to cultivate a passion for social justice and peace and to develop the skill and knowledge set needed to take practical action for change within the profession. Because many engineers do not receive education and training that support the kinds of critical thinking, reflective decision-making, and effective action necessary to achieve social change, engineers concerned with social justice can feel powerless and isolated as they remain complicit. Utilizing techniques from radical pedagogies of liberation and other movements for social justice, this book presents a roadmap for engineers to become empowered and engage one another in a process of learning and action for social justice and peace. Table of contents: What Do we Mean by Social Justice? / Mindsets in Engineering / Engineering and Social Injustice / Toward a More Socially Just Engineering / Turning Knowledge into Action: Strategies for Change / Parting Lessons for the Continuing Struggle
About the Author
Donna Riley is a founding faculty member and Associate Professor in the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College, where she has been teaching thermodynamics for over 10 years. She received her B.S.E. in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University. Her technical research combines methods in engineering and the social sciences to characterize and communicate chemical risk. She seeks to integrate quantitative modeling of chemical risks (from sources to exposure endpoints) with an understanding of the ways in which human beliefs and behavior influence risk. Past projects have involved characterizing the risks of mercury use as part of religious and folk traditions in Latino and Caribbean communities, and developing improved consumer-product warnings. She is currently collaborating with chemists at Smith and the University of Massachusetts on developing a community-oriented air quality research lab. In 2005 Riley received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation for implementing pedagogies of liberation, based on the work of Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and others, into engineering education. Aspects of critical pedagogies that are operationalized in Riley's classrooms include connecting course material to student experience, emphasizing students as authorities in the classroom, integrating ethics and policy considerations in the context of social justice, problematizing science as objectivity, and incorporating contributions from women, people of color, and people living in the global South.
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