Engineering Graduate Students’ Attitudes Towards Social Justice

Abstract

In post-secondary education engineers are not formally introduced to socially just engineering. This education focuses on technical expertise, often overlooking the social impacts of engineering outputs. Using essay prompts graduate school applicants’ views were assessed on social justice. Odds ratios and Chi-Square analyses were used to associate views on social justice and self-perceived programmatic competencies. While applicants were aware of social justice issues, their main reason for applying was to further career goals. Nearly forty percent of essays suggested that engineers are responsible for optimizing systems and mentioned the department’s inclusive design competencies 33 times. Even though most applicants reported interest in management systems, roughly 31.1% of applications advocated for systems thinking to be the primary social justice mechanism. When prompted, 96.2% of respondents reported that engineers should have a professional and ethical responsibility. Increasing exposure to socially just engineering is critical in producing holistically minded engineers.