Author: Dylan Anthony Hazelwood

By Alvaro D.

Engineering for Social Change has been a breath of fresh air in my engineering studies. Throughout this years I have learned technical skills and aptitudes that help me solve engineering problems, but that is not enough if you want to be a global engineer.

This course has made me realize all the power and influence that engineers have in society and that it is critical that this power is used wisely to face today and future world challenges. For this reason, more engineers are needed and more courses like Engineering for Social Change should be taught. As Bill Nye said, “there’s nothing I believe in more strongly than getting young people interested in science and engineering, for a better tomorrow, for all humankind.”

After the introductory class, the course started with Prof. Grimm explaining different motivations for doing good, and diverse ways of helping people in need. We had a class debate on which way of helping was better (Jane Addams vs Andrew Carnegie). This first class was a great example of how participating and giving opinion is fostered in this course.

During the semester we have had classes on many different topics related to the challenges engineers are fighting and will have to battle. Topics such as how engineering will look like in the future, how to manage waste or even the impact of social media on society.

The course is also focused on a very important issue, which is unintended consequences. We have learned that engineering actions have unintended consequences that engineers need to minimize or eliminate.

Last, the semester project gives you the opportunity to comprehend how nonprofits work, and the importance of their existence. The project is a stimulating and challenging way to identify a specific unintended consequence of engineering and find a way to mitigate it. In addition, the winning group gets a $10,000 grant for the non-profit organization they have worked with throughout the semester, which I found very exciting as we start to make an impact as engineers.

By Abraham D.

When you begin your studies as an engineering student at the University of Maryland you have all these great aspirations of what you want to accomplish as an engineer. As engineers progress through their careers they begin to consider the impact they will have on society and the legacy they will leave behind. The Engineering for Social Change course gave me an opportunity to take a step back and consider the implications of my work and pursuit of knowledge.

Taking five to six technical courses a semester has become a systemic grind we’ve come to expect as we try to cram an engineering degree into four years. The Engineering for Social Change course is a necessary break from the constant mind-numbing exercise of learning without much evaluation. This course challenged me to think about my actions as an engineer. Before taking a decision it is necessary to consider what the possible unintended consequences could be and how to mitigate them. The course taught me that a successful engineering project combines strong engineering concepts with beneficial societal, environmental and personal concerns.

The guest lecturers were a great addition to the course. The lecturers showed us how even in one’s own profession they can have a positive impact without being a rich philanthropist or work for a non-profit full time. Indeed, the lecture on “Giving Away Money Wisely” by Dr. Jennifer Littlefield led me to reevaluate the meaning of overhead and how charitable organizations spend their money. I will admit that before this lecture I would not donate to organizations with what I considered a “huge overhead.” In the lecture, however, the professor showed Dan Pallotta’s TED Talk on our perception of charities and how little overhead means nothing if the amount of good work that can be achieved is small.

During the semester-long project, our team focused on the problem of electronic waste known as e-waste. I learned that even though e-waste only makes up 2% of landfills in America it is the source of 70% of the overall toxic waste. The project was also a great learning experience as we initiated contact with our non-profit (World Computer Exchange) ourselves and presented our ideas to them. I had no prior experience working with a non-profit in this way nor did I know much about the e-waste problem the world had. This course allowed me along with my classmates to discuss the non-profit we intend to fund in a way that I had not experienced in any class before, and for that, I am truly grateful.

This course was an amazing learning experience and a break from the usual. I would recommend this course to anyone interested in the impact of their work beyond the usual engineering concepts. This course adds the necessary human aspect missing in most engineering courses. If I’ve learned anything I’ve learned to consider the possible unintended consequences and their effect on the world we live in.

By Jordan D.

This course was very unique when compared to my previous mechanical engineering courses. I had expected this course to discuss engineering terms such as safety factors. This course was instead very similar to my general education class “Engineering Ethics,” where we studied engineering ethics by reviewing case studies. That class gave me a distinct perspective on engineering and is the reason I decided to register for the Engineering for Social Change course. During the semester, I learned that being a professional engineer comes with great benefit but an even greater responsibility. Engineers must make an ethical decision of whether to pursue profits and overlook negative consequences. I learned that there is a lot of factors to consider when trying to make a positive impact, because the threat of unintended consequences is real.

Throughout the semester, we were given lectures on various topics related to social change. On one particular presentation, Dr. Grimm impersonated a homeless individual and tried to get the students to donate to him. The class had a discussion about the things we considered when deciding to give our money to people and organizations. This discussion allowed me to see the complexities of being socially involved. During another lecture I learned about the global issues and technology engineers will have to face in the near future. This gave me a more optimistic view on the field as a whole seeing that the technologies we discussed are interesting. I feel that the technologies, such as genetically modified food, 3D printing and self-driving cars have an important role to play in creating a better future. The course theme for this semester was waste. I became more aware of how much waste the United States produces and the side effects of not treating said waste. The most shocking thing I learned is that approximately 40% of food produced in the US gets thrown away every year. This was even more alarming when I discovered that we already have the means to end world hunger. I began to feel that the information I was learning in this course was more important than any of my other engineering classes.

There was a lot I took away from this course. As an individual I will have the opportunity to give back to my community, and the greater world, through philanthropic efforts. I plan to one day participate in a foundation that supports initiates I see as effective. This course has helped me affirm my decision to study engineering and become a working engineer. I understand now why our society sees engineers in a high prestige. Being that this is my senior year, this course makes me want to join an organization, such as Engineers Without Borders so that I can use my technical schools to make a positive impact.  After experiencing the technical challenges that nonprofits face, I have considered working at a non-profit. To limit my personal contribution to waste, I will participate in recycling in my home and I will try to incorporate composting as well, maybe going as far as to have a home garden. I plan to keep my electronic devices for as long as possible to limit my electronic waste.  I recommend that all engineering students take this course because it shows engineering from a real world perspective.

By Zelalem D.

Engineering for Social Change? That was my first reaction when I first heard about the course. I honestly didn’t know what to expect until the first day of class.  From Engineering for Social change class, I have learned a lot about things that I unintentionally do every single day but can have a big negative impact on our environment as well as on the community health. I also learned that the importance of engineering ethics that is how to honestly serve the community in my engineering skills in the future. I came from a country which has a very limited basic infrastructure, like access for clean water and electricity, so I know what it means not to have access for basic human needs. The reason I wanted to take ENME 467 (Engineering for Social Change) is that I wanted to learn how I can contribute to change the situation in the community particularly in Ethiopia. Engineering for social change taught me how to give back to the community, how to work with people in different background, how to practice my engineering knowledge following basic engineering ethics, how to interact with organizations and work along. Out of all the lectures presented throughout the semester, “Waste to Energy” given by Mark Freedman, Covanta and ‘Ethics” by Adm. Millard Firebaugh, are resonated in me.

Waste to energy lecture is one of the most interesting lecture that has given in this course. The presenter described the problem and the solution his organization came up with. The major problem that he described is that the society still lack deep understanding of the danger of the pollution, and most families still don’t sort out a recyclable waste from the trash. I was one of the many who don’t separate plastics and trashes until Mr. Freedman lecture. In the town where I grew up, littering a very common thing and causes big damages in many ways. Although schools and different NPOs try to educate the community about the danger of the littering especially plastic materials, it has been difficult to achieve the goal breaking economic challenge and people still litter. As a result, drainages get stuck and flood run on the road ever summer, in some cases the road get cut in two, cause traffic accidents and many more problems. Engineers can and should solve this problem by working with community. Philanthropy is another way of handling waste. Food and electronics donation can solve waste problem and help the people in need, so I learn that engineers should involve in social service.

Another important lecture that impacted me is the “Ethics” by Adm. Millard Firebaugh. Considering the amount of damage that could happen because of irresponsibly work of engineers, making sure engineers follow engineering ethics a very critical part of this course. I believe one of the main reasons that undeveloped countries have poor infrastructure is bad work ethics and corruption, especially in industries and manufacturing sector. For instance, in Ethiopia, roads get washed up in one summer rain and a dam that supposed to provide power for millions has collapsed after a few years of its inauguration. No one in Ethiopia knows the real reason why these kinds of loss happened in a country that can’t afford to rebuild, other than the government and may be the engineers. But, some independent investigators suggested that the engineers were corrupted and the design didn’t meet the specifications. Engineers should know better and always strive to serve the community and work for social change. I think it is possible to achieve and to work for social change, but it wasn’t taught before. Engineering for Social Change, “Ethics” lecture gave me a better understanding of what I as a future engineer should serve for a social change not just for the profit.

Finally, taking Engineering for Social Change has taught me how much positive impact individuals, specifically engineers can have in the society. Philanthropy, engineering ethics, and waste for energy are some of the lectures that I personally took away from the course.

By Mitchell C.

As I was signing up for classes for my first semester of my junior year and my first semester at the University of Maryland, I wanted to start it off by trying something different. I wanted to get away from all the numbers and equations, and Engineering for Social Change seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. This class, rather than focusing on numbers and equations, taught me what being an engineer really means. In addition, it showed me the importance of unintended consequences and philanthropy.

An engineer can easily get caught up in their work and overlook many important points that could lead to unintended consequences. This class taught me not only how to prevent these unintended consequences from happening, but also how to mitigate them. To prevent unintended consequences, we as engineers must slow our progress down. By moving too quickly, it risks mistaken hypotheses and other problems that could be caused by lack of testing. To mitigate unintended consequences, we as engineers must understand the complexity and dynamics of a project. In addition, we must increase our knowledge of the situation, combine uncertainties, and most importantly work together. If these measures are taken, we could reduce the number of unintended consequences and construct technology that is much more useful and friendly. Engineers should have desire to help others, but do so that everyone benefits and so that no one is getting left behind or hurt by what we create.

Philanthropy was a common term that was often discussed in class that I have never thought of much before. Little did I know the importance of it and how important it is to engineers. The semester long project is what really taught me the true meaning philanthropy. Being able to experience it first hand was something I will never forget. To be able to work with other engineers to propose a project that could help our environment was an amazing experience. Being a part of the winning team was just the icing on the cake. Win or lose the competition, no one loses in the end. We all worked together to support a project that will help our environment. Small impacts, such as this one, are the ones that will end up making the real change in our world.

The power that engineers have is immense, and it is important that we use that power wisely to help our society. Social change to me is about the impact engineers have on our society. Everything we create has an impact, negatively or positively, and it is our job to make sure that it is for the better. This class taught me how to do that by showing me first hand what philanthropy really means and the real danger of unintended consequences. Moving forward in my career, I am now more comfortable with who I am as an engineer and more confident in my ability to be able to perform tasks.

Engineering for Social Change will be a class I think of a lot during my career as an engineer. It has changed my perspective on what being an engineer is all about. Without this class, I would not feel complete when graduating. This allowed me to see the other side of engineering and I believe it is essential for all engineers to take this course. Sadly, as a classmate mentioned, “The people who needs this class the most are the ones who are not going to take it.” Engineers are constantly being forced to improve things to make them bigger, faster, and more attractive. This class forces you to step outside of the box and be different. For some people, it may be a little uncomfortable at first, but in the end the benefit of it is immeasurable.

By Amar C.

I personally believe that this course has influenced myself in several ways. To begin with, I am an international exchange student whose home university courses do not seem
anything like this one. There are not that dynamic and does not enable that much student participation as well as real project involvement. Therefore, overall I am quite impressed.

Most of the previous courses I have taken are relatively related to technical topics. I think it was the first time that I cover the actual influence that my professional career could make with that variety of examples. They use presentations following most of the guidelines of the book. Note that it is key to mention the opportunity of give a $10,000 grant to an engineering project of a non-profit organization. It has been quite a responsibility that professors could believe in us to give away that amount wisely.

In this course I have learned that an engineer could be involved in endless areas. This includes from medicine, energy, finance or artificial intelligence. Specifically engineers these days are being more valued for their social awareness and sustainable solutions more than ever. They could generate solutions that could make a social change and solve the unintended consequence generated from previous projects or technologies.

To sum up, I think that this course would help engineering students to raise global awareness and that their studies go beyond such technical issues. Also, if they are willing to do so, they could generate a social impact starting with the non-profit organization project.

By Sulma C.

Engineering for Social Change has been unlike any engineering course I have taken before. This course stepped away from the traditional engineering curriculum, which is rigorous and technical, and instead focused on the bigger picture— what it means to be an engineer. Through thought-provoking lectures and discussions, we learned about the future of engineering, pressing global issues, and the unintended consequences of engineering successes. We also discussed the importance of combining ethics, philanthropy, and social awareness with engineering.

As a junior mechanical engineering student, I have found that in many of my courses, the social aspect of engineering has been overlooked or only lightly discussed. I spend most of my time deriving equations, performing calculations, or conducting experiments. Although these skills are necessary, they need to be supplemented with social awareness. Technical courses can sometimes feel distant from the real world and its complexities. It becomes easy to forget that engineering is not all about building bridges and spacecraft, it is about making difficult decisions and facing issues such as pollution, global warming, inequality.

This semester, the theme of the course was waste—a major issue that engineers face today. I learned about the many different types of waste and methods of handling it. For example, sending paper and plastic waste to an energy for waste plant instead of a landfill. I learned about the alarming effects of pollution on our environment and what engineers are doing to mitigate them. I learned about approaches to producing less waste such as additive manufacturing (3D printing). I learned about the ethical concerns and negative consequences of exporting our electronic waste to developing countries. I gained a better understanding of how badly polluted our planet is, and that as future engineers, pollution will be one of our greatest challenges.
Engineering for Social Change reminded me that engineers have the ability to change the world and the responsibility to change it for the better, that engineers are innovators and builders of the future. Personally, this course has challenged me to become more aware of the world I live in and prepare myself for the problems that will be handed down to me as a future engineer. I learned that as engineers, we have to be reliable, transparent, knowledgeable, and socially aware.

By Zachary B.

Throughout my four years as a mechanical engineering student at the University of Maryland, engineering has primarily meant, the application of mathematics and physical sciences to real world applications. I still do believe in this definition of engineering. What I had not previously considered though, was to what extent those real world applications could vary, and the impact any one application could have. I had not truly thought about how monetarily driven much of my engineering education was. Beyond the purely theoretical courses, even the classes focused on designing a product, or reverse engineering a product, were all focused on a piece of engineering that had the simple goal of generating the most revenue. Engineering ethics has still been a factor throughout my coursework, but it has always been very narrow in scope as I see it. The ethics were more focused on ensuring the design was safe and honest, while the ethics of the overarching goal of the design was rarely discussed. Engineering for social change was the first course I had taken in my college career that has allowed me to take a step back and look at the bigger picture of engineering in our modern society.

Working with a nonprofit organization on our own technological project for a good cause, in conjunction with the various lectures we had throughout the semester, provided a very different experience than conventional engineering courses. The lectures have mostly given me a different outlook on engineering as a career. I now find myself questioning what the overall goal of a product is, what the potential impact it could have is, how this could affect society, etc. I’ve learned that these are very important questions that every engineer should be asking themselves throughout their career. I previously did not think to ask these questions during my experience as an intern. Instead, like many workers, I just did what my boss told me to do. As simple as that sounds, I have learned throughout the semester, that following orders without questioning the ethics behind your actions, has resulted in very unethical things in the past. My main takeaway from the course is; now knowing that what we do as engineers has the potential to impact many people, and our work can determine that impact, it is important that we first question the outcomes of our work, and only continue with what each of us, as individuals, believes is right.

By Jaime B.

This course allowed me to explore in an in-depth and hands-on way what it meant to have a professional mission for social good in the context of being an engineer.  I realize now this was the missing piece of my earlier explorations in to doing social good – they had all be in coursework, projects, and personal interests outside of my discipline.  This course found a way to inject the meaning of social good into what it meant to be an engineer in a meaningful and impactful way and change my fundamental methods of operation as an egineer.  How can I explain that?  Well, let’s take the essential method of the engineer, the design cycle, and look at how my understanding of each stage was changed as a results of this course.  Let’s review, shall we?

Stage 1: Define the problem and gather information.

Normally we learn this stage includes completing market research, researching existing knowledge and solutions, and evaluating what features lead to a good product.  In this course I learned where these methods fall short and what questions we should ask ourselves to supplement our current education.  Whose cultural perspective are we defining the problem from?  Is it our own or is that of those who we’re attempting to serve (hint: I learned it should be this one).  Have we considered the causes of the problem, and whether engineers are responsible for those causes?

Stage 2: Concept generation and evaluations of concepts.

Perhaps this is the stage of the design process that most directly relates to this course.  In this stage we should be asking ourselves the essential questions, what is the unintended consequence of our concept?  Who benefits from our concept?  Who does not?  Is our concept serving those who really need it, or is it taking advantage of the public?  For example, let’s say I had developed a new battery technology for a power tool that would increase performance for the user – but have I checked to make sure the materials from that battery can be sustainably sourced?  Where are they from and are the workers in this industry treated fairly?  And what will happen to the battery after the consumer is done with it?

Stage 3: Embodiment design.

Here’s where the rubber hits the road and raw materials and sketches turn into engineering drawings and products. In this class I learned from the project we partnered with our non-profit on about this stage.  In this project a significant amount of new metrics and constraints were added to the project design that I had not seen in my studies before.  We had to consider project performance measured in units of impact (and how to define ‘impact’), and how the generous philanthropic resources of this class would be best used.  These design considerations were new and strange but through them I learned how to better implement them in my future career.

Phew!  Good job, everyone.  Now, let’s summarize.

This course was the first time I spent a whole semester focused on how my engineering activities can be focused for social good.  This in-depth exercise was unlike my other brushes with the topic before.  Simply put, without this in-depth experience the subtleties of how engineering and social change mingle would have been partly lost on me.  The philanthropic mission of the course also gave this exploration a ‘hands-on’ aspect that furthered my learning even more.  Throughout our education we are told that in-depth and hands-on learning is a path to success and I agree!  So why should the intersection of social change and doing good be an exception to this?  This class ensured it wouldn’t be, and in my future career, as I interact with the tools of the engineer, such as the design cycle (well, my revised cycle, that is), I will keep these lessons in mind.

By Getachew A.

This class is very different than any of the classes I have taken before. Prior to this semester, all of the engineering classes I was taking only taught me how to solve a certain problem using the given equations. There was usually only one way of attacking a problem, which is not the case with real life problems. In real life, most problems cannot just be solved with equations. Life is not just about finding derivatives and calculating spring constants, but much more than that. As engineers, we need to think about how to engineer solutions as well as how our engineered solutions will be perceived by the people using them. We also need to give some thought to the unintended consequences of these engineered solutions as some might backfire. Overall, this class has made me think about the social impact I can make as an engineer and how much potential an engineer has in making positive and negative social impact in the world.

Throughout the semester, the guest lecturers have been helpful in correlating engineering to social change in various ways. Professor Jungho Kim’s lecture was helpful as it highlighted some aspects about the future of engineering and how engineering might evolve and how it might be implemented in the future. Professor Robert Grimm’s lecture was also very helpful in understanding why philanthropy is important for engineers. Lastly, Professor Michael Pecht’s lecture was very interesting and educating as he mainly talked about engineering and culture. I was able to understand that engineering solutions have to be culturally appropriate in order have social impact.

Lastly, the group work project, which involved choosing a nonprofit organization that worked on some kind of waste management was helpful. This project was incredibly helpful as it helped me improve my skills of working with other people hand in hand in order to achieve a certain goal. Additionally, the student driven decision-making process was something very different from any of the other classes I have taken before. As engineers, I am sure we will be making plenty of decisions that might impact the lives of people and I believe the student driven decision-making process gave us a good glimpse of how our careers might be like as future engineers.

In conclusion, I believe the uniqueness of this course made it particularly enjoyable. It gave me a better understanding of philanthropy and the social impact engineers can have. It was also a good break from all of the calculations involved in many of the class I am currently taking. I will definitely be recommending this class to my fellow engineering peers as I believe they all should have some idea of how they can have social impact in this world.