Work in Progress: Iterating Eco-Social Justice Learning Experiences Through Community-Partnered Capstone Design Projects

Abstract

Capstone design is a critical culminating experience in the academic trajectory of all undergraduate engineering students. At the University of San Diego, each year a handful of engineering capstone design teams out of the several dozen across the college work on community-partnered projects. The projects are seeded and nurtured by efforts from a formalized university initiative, the Engineering Exchange for Social Justice. During the 2021-2022 academic year, the authors of this paper were instructors for the year-long, multidisciplinary engineering capstone design course. The course structure and timeline cater to traditional, corporate/industry-sponsored projects. Three out of ten teams across our two course sections worked on community-partnered projects. We sought to learn about the student experience for those working on the community project teams. Each team member completed a reflection assignment with specified prompts at the end of the fall and spring semester. We analyzed the reflections using inductive thematic analysis. We identified 'Justice' and 'Connectivity' as primary themes, which connect to sociotechnical proficiencies we hoped to develop in the students. However, the reflections also highlighted challenges and shortcomings of our current model. For this work-in-progress paper, we share our salient findings from each theme, as well as instructor observations and lessons-learned from this community project capstone model.