Impact of Materials on Society (IMOS) Workshop

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NON TECHNICALThe Division of Materials Research is supporting a one-day workshop in December 2014 at the Boston meeting of the Materials Research Society to discuss and disseminate an interdisciplinary engineering-humanities-social science course entitled the "Impact of Materials on Society" which seeks to improve simultaneously the scientific and social literacies of undergraduate students. This meeting will contribute to the educational infrastructure of materials science, and engineering more broadly, by providing a model for building broader bridges at institutions around the country between research in materials science and engineering, the humanities, and social sciences to examine how to create successful technologies that address critical social issues in ways that respect human values and belief systems. There is a pressing need, at this moment in particular, to bring these fields into productive dialogue with materials science and engineering. Such a dialogue will strengthen faculty research and undergraduate and graduate learning by marrying technical and scientific knowledge with contemporary research into social life and human experience. Such a dialogue will also feed demands for interdisciplinary, entrepreneurial, innovative, and creative curriculum foundations around the country.TECHNICALFor the past 20 years, engineering educators have sought teaching strategies that move beyond the traditional lecture format of the engineering classroom. This search is particularly important in the context of a need to "change the conversation" about engineering by demonstrating that engineers, or more specifically material scientists and engineers, are not simply people who "like math and science", but who are also "creative problem-solvers" that help "shape our future" by improving our "health, happiness, and safety". This emphasis on the important social role of engineering seeks both to improve the scientific literacy of the broader public, as well as to educate future engineers about the global, environmental, and social contexts in which they work. To address these goals, an interdisciplinary engineering-humanities-social science course was developed entitled the "Impact of Materials on Society" which seeks to improve simultaneously the scientific and social literacies of undergraduate students with one curricular endeavor. Through formal and independent evaluation, the course has been demonstrated to increase significantly three variables: the social literacy of engineering students, the scientific and technical literacy of non-engineering students, and the awareness of students of any major to the interconnections between scientific and social literacies through exposing them to the role, values, and importance of material science and engineering throughout human civilization. To date the course has been developed and taught only at the University of Florida. The Division of Materials Research is supporting a one-day workshop in December 2014 at the Boston meeting of the Materials Research Society to disseminate the course design and evaluation tools to other pilot institutions to disseminate the results of the course, to broaden the impact of the course, and to collect additional data on how social and scientific literacies can be taught to diverse student groups.