Research: Advancing Engineers’ Ability to Recognize, Strategize About, and Act On Concerns Related to Public Welfare

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Engineers’ attention to the impact of technology on public safety, health, and welfare has never been more imperative. Recent reports of algorithmic bias, drone-based surveillance, and emissions falsification (among other issues) underscore the potential harms of the socio-technical systems in which engineers may play a part. Through surveys and interviews, we will develop and test a multilevel theoretical framework for understanding engineers’ concerns for public welfare and for examining cultural, institutional, and identity factors that shape these concerns. We will develop a research-informed graduate seminar that will provide a model for engineering programs at other institutions to enhance professional responsibility training among their students. Having a better understanding of how engineering professionals and students recognize their public welfare responsibilities will help engineering educators and leaders revise training efforts and accountability infrastructures to equip engineers to more effectively uphold their professional responsibilities. The project will also contribute to the knowledge base on engineering workforce onboarding and training, and will serve as a benchmark for research on engineers’ understanding of their public welfare responsibilities.We will examine possible factors that impact engineers’ concern for public welfare across three levels: professional cultural ideologies, institutional contexts (engineering education, engineering workplaces, and professional societies), and professional identities. We will use this multilevel framework to address several primary research questions: (1) to what extent do engineering professionals and students recognize, strategize about, and act on concerns for public welfare as part of their professional responsibilities? (2) What cultural, institutional, and identity factors promote or undermine these outcomes? (3) To what extent can a research-informed seminar teach students to recognize public welfare responsibilities and to understand strategies for intervention? We will investigate these questions with a representative survey of US engineers (N=500) and a longitudinal interview study following a cohort of electrical and computer engineering master’s students into the workforce (N=60). Using insights from these data, a novel “Public Welfare Responsibility and Intervention Training” (PubWRIT) graduate seminar will be designed (and assessed) to train engineers to recognize and understand how to respond when they encounter situations where they perceive the health and safety of the public to be at risk.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.