Board 54: Do Engineering Students Care about the Social Good?

Abstract

This research paper explores the beliefs that students hold around major social issues including social justice, global disparities, and the role of technology in alleviating injustice. In a survey completed by almost 400 students from four different areas of study at a major public university, scores from three subscales of social responsibility beliefs show that education and environmental studies majors express stronger beliefs about global disparities than engineering students. Significant differences among environmental, education, business, and engineering majors also emerged regarding beliefs about the potential for technology to support solutions to major social issues. In contrast, no significant difference among engineering, education, environmental studies, and business majors emerged in terms of beliefs about social justice. Depending on the model, sustainability either embodies social responsibility within global environmental limits or overlaps social responsibility with economic and environmental concerns about providing the next generation with opportunities comparable to the present generation. Regardless of which model is accepted, sustainable development includes critical issues of social responsibility, but can also be presented in the context of specific challenges (e.g. resource scarcity, sustainable energy). These allow us to study how social responsibility extends from beliefs and knowledge to responsibility for supporting sustainable development. To this end, three additional scales oriented around the specific issues of sustainability and sustainable development are also addressed in this study to examine the interrelationships among beliefs, knowledge, and responsibility. A hierarchical linear regression model was constructed to study these interrelationships using student major, four belief subscales, and one knowledge subscale as independent variables, and responsibility for sustainable development as a dependent variable. Results showed that beliefs about social justice and sustainability as well as knowledge about sustainability significantly predicted responsibility for sustainability. However, beliefs about global disparities and the role of technology did not predict this outcome. No interactions between student major and beliefs or knowledge were found, thereby suggesting that these relationships among beliefs, knowledge, and responsibility remain true across area of study. In conjunction with existing studies, these results support the public perception that engineers are less concerned with social issues, but also promote the idea that education targeted toward developing beliefs and improving knowledge can potentially impact the level of responsibility for social issues adopted by students in school and subsequently in their chosen professions.