Our fall ‘95 readings surveyed the role of the engineer from the Classical Age to the Steam Age to the Modern Age of Total Quality Management. The engineer was studied as a hero, as a character in science fiction and as a villain of the anti-technology movement. To complete the survey, the course included women in engineering and contemporary challenges in engineering ethics. Througout the survey, two questions provided continuity for discussion: How did each society regard the engineer? Was this opinion realistic?
Assigned topics for discussion included Hephaestus, the mythical metallurgical engineer in Homer’s The Iliad and John, Washington, and Emily Roebling, the heroic engineers of the Brooklyn Bridge. Emily Roebling also introduced attitudes challenging the woman engineer. Contrasting heroic and villainous portraits of engineers were studied through science fiction of Jules Verne and Ursula Leguin, respectively. Poetry by Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Carl Sandburg celebrated engineering achievements at their most heroic, while the verse of William Wordsworth and Henry Reed portrayed the destructiveness of technology. John Hersey’s A Single Pebble presented the paradoxical position of a civil engineer attempting to build a modern, lifesaving dam in ancient culture China. The anti-technology movement and engineering ethics were discussed in response to Vance Packard’s The Wastemakers. Additional ethics discussions responded to the impact of the TVA on northwestern North Carolina, and to a 1995 Pulitzer prize-winning newspaper series on the state’s expanding large-scale hog industry. Several biographical readings by writer-engineer Samuel Forman were provided, the many roles of bridges were displayed in Henry Petroski’s essay "Imagine", and Richard Meehan’s description of engineering’s psychological rewards ended the semeester "Snowbound on the Rio Pangal."
The selection criteria for these varied readings were only two: All had to concern engineering or technology, and all had to be well written, thus providing positive models for the students’ composing.
Students developed writing skills by completing daily journals, by analyzing written instructions, and by writing formal thesis papers. Their journal entries included comments on class discussions, new ideas about technology or engineering, and design problems observed in daily life. Journal entries were collected three times, read and were, for the most part, returned without comment. Although several students completed their journals begrudgingly, the writing process helped them to articulate ideas better. Ironically, the student who objected most strenuously to journal writing responded to one of Ann’s rare journal comments by turning an entry into an A theme. In an additional study of writing, students provided and analyzed samples of commercial, written instructions. These instructions, for a variety of subjects from furniture assemble to software use, were analyzed to determine why good ones succeeded and poor ones failed. By semester’s end, the class had produced four guidelines for writing successful instructions, and voted to pass these on to succeeding classes to completes.
During the semester, students wrote six formal papers and revised them several times. Theme topics grew in complexity, from "describe a person or event that influenced you to pursue an engineering education" to "critique and edit one of the lab manuals you have used this semester." Additional topics included comparison/contrast and process analysis papers and an analysis of a current advertisement, article, or editorial related to engineering. One theme, a mini-research paper, challenged students to select an engineer whom they considered a hero(ine) in his/her field and to defend this status based upon the engineer’s achievements. This assignment differed from the norm not only by requiring outside research, but also by assignment of report responsibility to a team rather that the individual student. Some students were initially delighted because they supposed that having a co-author would mean halving the work; however, they soon learned the challenges of collaborative research and reporting. Usually, these team results required more revision than the single theme assignments, but the final outcomes were impressive. During the semester, the students’ writing skills developed in direct proportion to the number of revisions submitted.
Class discussions were also stimulated by paintings, lithographs, and videotapes. Currier and Ives provided romantic and allegorical interpretations of the steam locomotive. A variety of paintings demonstrated both positive and negative views of engineering technology. Ken Burns video "biography" titled The Brooklyn Bridge provided historic and aesthetic highlights of this landmark in civil engineering, The 1920’s silent movie Metropolis gave a unique perspective on a futuristic world and helped introduce engineering ethics and the anti-technology movement.
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