Student Learning About Engineering and Corporate Social Responsibility: A Comparison Across Engineering and Liberal Arts Courses

Abstract

As an anthropologist, her research interests focus around the mining and energy industries, with particular emphasis in corporate social responsibility, engineers, labor and gender. She is the author of Mining Coal and Undermining Gender: Rhythms of Work and Family in the American West, which was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation. She is currently investigating the intersections between engineering and CSR on the NSF grant "The Ethics of Extraction: Integrating Corporate Social Responsibility into Engineering Education."Dr. Nicole M. Smith, Colorado School of Mines Dr. Smith is a Assistant Professor in Mining Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. She is a cultural anthropologist with research and teaching interests in livelihoods and extractive industries, corporate social responsibility, indigenous peoples, artisanal and small-scale mining, and engineering education. Dr. Greg Rulifson P.E., Colorado School of MinesGreg currently teaches in Humanitarian Engineering at Mines. Greg earned his bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering with a minor in Global Poverty and Practice from UC Berkeley where he acquired a passion for using engineering to facilitate developing communities' capacity for success. He earned his master's degree in Structural Engineering and Risk Analysis from Stanford University. His PhD work at CU Boulder focused on how student's connections of social responsibility and engineering change throughout college as well as how engineering service is valued in employment and supported in the workplace.

Student commitment to social responsibility: Systematic literature review, conceptual model, and instrument

“…This type of research is relevant, for example, to understand the influence of policies of higher education institutions in guiding students' corporate social responsibility. Smith et al (2018) provided results from the first year of research evaluating the introduction of SR content in courses for undergraduates at three universities: Colorado School of Mines, Virginia Tech, and Marietta College. They analyzed responses from surveys before and after introducing the RS content which was applied to more than 600 students in mining engineering, petroleum engineering, design, and liberal arts courses.…”

“…Pätäri, Arminen, Albareda, Puumalainen and Toppinen (2017) used an online questionnaire provided by Qualtrics Online Survey Software that they applied to students from three universities in Finland, Hong Kong, and Spain. Smith et al (2018) also used questionnaires, covering more than 600 students in Mining Engineering, Petroleum Engineering, Design, and Liberal Arts. Regarding interviews, Nittala, Zephirin, Howland, Kim, Katz, and Jesiek (2018) addressed 112 university students through semi-structured interviews.…”

Beyond the Social License to Operate: Training Socially Responsible Engineers to Contend with Corporate Frameworks for Community Engagement

“…Our data consist of pre-and post-student responses on a survey instrument that we developed and validated for a much larger research project on corporate social responsibility in engineering education. A detailed account of the survey instrument and the wider project can be found in our previous publications [7], [12], [13]. The survey questions we analyze here assess changes in students' abilities to define the social license to operate (SLO), to gauge the extent to which a company had achieved an SLO, and to critique the role of the SLO in a company's overall social responsibility efforts.…”

Critical Approaches to CSR as a Strategy to Broaden Engineering Students’ Views of Stakeholders

“…The teaching activities were undertaken between Fall 2016 and Spring 2018 at four different schools: Colorado School of Mines, Virginia Tech, Marietta College (Ohio), and the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology. The research was sponsored by a Cultivating Cultures for Ethical STEM grant from the National Science Foundation, and the details of the project are available in our previous publications [13]- [15]. This paper builds on our preliminary analysis of the survey data we collected to assess changes in students' knowledge, opinions, and abilities related to CSR and engineering.…”

“…This paper builds on our preliminary analysis of the survey data we collected to assess changes in students' knowledge, opinions, and abilities related to CSR and engineering. We previously identified the main trends happening in each of the courses [15]. In general, students improved in defining CSR and recognizing its social, environmental and economic dimensions.…”