Education: Embed social awareness in science curricula

January 23, 2014

As a social scientist who is also trained as an engineer, I am puzzled by how often public-welfare and social-justice issues are viewed as irrelevant or tangential to ‘real’ technical work in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professions. I carried out a study, the results of which suggest that university education exacerbates this culture of disengagement. Between 2003 and 2008, I surveyed a total of more than 300 engineering students in four US universities — a large state college, an elite technical college, a small engineering-only university and a small private liberal-arts college. Following students from their first year to 18 months after their graduation, I found that, on average, they left their degrees less interested in public welfare than when they began. (Nature)