Is Service an Expected Part of the Engineering Profession?

Abstract

Should community service be an expected part of the engineering profession? A certain amount of pro bono work is expected of professionals, in engineering as well as more prominently in law. And if service is part of the engineering profession, should it become part of the education of engineering students? How? Should it be integrated into technical courses, as in servicelearning, or should it be left to extra curricular activities? Student opinions were sampled recently. Courses with service-learning projects have been integrated into existing required courses in engineering over the past six years in five departments of University of Massachusetts Lowell. A recent sampling of entering engineering students at this university revealed that 75% agreed with the statement that public service should be considered as part of the engineering profession. A survey of all students in the same engineering school at all years in the curriculum resulted in an even higher percentage of agreement. Similar results were obtained in response to the statement that service and academic course work should be integrated. The codes of conduct of several engineering professional societies as well as evidence from this case study supports the principle that service should be considered part of the engineering profession. Integrating service-learning within existing technical courses is a concrete way of training students in how and why engineers perform such professional community service.

What Do Students Think About Service-learning in Required Engineering Courses?

“…The goal was to have students exposed to S-L in on average one course in each of eight semesters during their engineering program with an overarching aim to graduate better engineers and more engaged citizens. Previous papers have summarized earlier results [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] .…”