Many engineering programs across the country have rigid course structures to meet the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. standards which accredits programs in colleges and universities for applied science, computing, engineering, and engineering technology. The accreditation allows for schools to compete within the global standard and essentially grants an institution validity within those programs. Getting a degree from an accredited institution is a sign of quality education helps students make a seamless transition into the workforce. While it is important to be a diligent worker and being well versed in all the calculations, formulas, and applications of engineering, is the criteria lacking the pursuit of compassion in the workforce?
The ABET Criteria
The criteria required for each discipline is listed on the official ABET website. The first two criteria for an accrediting engineering program are as follows:
“(a) an ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering
(b) an ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data.”
It’s not until the eighth point where we see a mention of humanities in relation to engineering:
“(h) the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context.”
Looking closely at what is required for the curriculum, ABET states that it must include “a general education component that complements the technical content of the curriculum and is consistent with the program and institution objectives.” Although it is a vague requirement, it does allow for freedom of the institution to enforce their mission objectives and students to choose classes outside of the engineering realm.
ABET timeline from 2012
However, this vagueness may be a pass to neglect the importance of humanities classes and may be seen as more of a tool for a GPA booster for many engineering students. But perhaps this could be hurting advances and progress by limiting our scope of knowledge.
Are engineers less empathetic?
A study done by Eric Cech, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice University, was done to see the interest in the welfare of others among electrical engineering students. They were asked to rate the “importance of matters that show compassion” before and after they received their degree. She found that in a group of 300 electrical engineering students, their compassion for others declined after students finished school.
Although it seems natural that empathy wouldn’t be necessary in tedious calculations, researcher Chato Rasoal believes the exact opposite to be true saying that “advanced engineers often take on leading positions in companies, where they have to be able to lead teams involving many co-workers. This requires both good communication skills and social competence. In today´s global business world you also need intercultural competence, an ability to communicate and collaborate with people from entirely different cultures.”
Another researcher, Anthony Jack, an assistant professor of cognitive psychology at Case Western, tried to understand the distance between scientific accounts/neuroscience and emotionally engaged understanding that humans have. He said, “You want the CEO of a company to be highly analytical in order to run a company efficiently, otherwise it will go out of business. But, you can lose your moral compass if you get stuck in an analytic way of thinking.”
None of this is to say that engineers are by nature uncaring and unable to be empathic or compassionate, but the nature of the work is intense. High stress levels allowing for a lack of those traits.
When deadlines need to be met by certain industry standards, being empathetic might not be as readily available as being productive and effective. There are expectations that need to be met, bridges that need to be built, hospitals that need to be powered and businesses that need to operate to provide for people and their families. If there were excuses to be made for the reason a building couldn’t be built and everyone could be as empathetic as they wanted to be, the infrastructure that our daily lives depend on might not exist. Laborers are dispensable and if an engineer cannot work for personal reasons, they will be replaced to get work done. This, of course, presents itself as the dilemma Jack speaks about: wanting to be efficient without losing track of ethics and morality.
Is it possible to be both 100 percent efficient and 100 percent moral when working for a business or corporation? The goal is to make profits and some businesses will compromise morals to achieve this goal. Of course, there are laws in place to protect human rights, but it goes further than that sometimes.
The Student Narrative
If you ask many students why do they engineering, the salary can play a huge role as motivator. The starting salaries for engineers are notoriously greater than many majors. Of course money is a motivator for many things, but why have students lose sight of the greater inventions, innovations, and byproducts of engineering? Programs like Engineers Without Borders incorporate the humanitarian aspects that are possible with a career in engineering and serve the greater community. There seems to be very little impetus to push students in this direction.
Engineers Without Borders-USA began in 2000 by Professor Bernard Amadei with the goal of creating positive change for developing communities through the combined efforts of students, faculty, professional engineers and community members.
Even though there is a general education proponent of the ABET curriculum, the disconnect between the sciences and humanities is vast. Learning about environmental philosophy in one context and then learning about energy sources in another with no bridge in between seems to be counterproductive. We treat engineering and the humanities as two separate entities when we should recognize how important they are to one another. If engineering classes are so hard to encourage critical thinking, why do we not encourage this critical thinking for world issues?
It has baffled me the people I personally know who have gone to work for defense contractors for internships and post-college. While it comes down to personal politics, seeing engineers come to terms with creating weapons used in our never-ending wars is unsettling. If we had a better understanding of humanities and political affairs, would people still be willing to make that decision? Perhaps engineering doesn’t have room for compassion, but there have been many advances made in pursuit of a better society for everyone that have curbed difficulties and made daily lifer pleasurable and easier for the average person. 3D printing for medical applications, communication devices to help those who can’t speak, renewable energy to help save our planet, brain mapping to help us understand how exactly the human brain works, and the many efforts by Engineers Without Borders to help better water supply, sanitation, agriculture, and civil works. These are all part of the many contributions made by engineers to help make this world a better place without compromising the compassion that we have for others. Compassion and engineering are not mutually exclusive and we need to change the conversation we have when breeding the younger generations of engineers.