Speaker: Prof. Borjana Mikic | Engineering | Smith College
Coauthor: Prof. Andrew Guswa | Engineering | Smith College
This May marks the 10th anniversary of the first graduating class of engineers from the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College; the first ABET-accredited engineering program at an all women’s college and one of only a handful of engineering programs housed within a liberal arts setting. From its inception, the program has framed engineering as a profession in service to humanity and our curricular approach has emphasized the importance of studying engineering within its larger social, cultural, and environmental context. We will use the opportunity of this panel on the role of the liberal arts in increasing the participation of women in C-STEM to examine the demographic distribution of our students, what choices engineers at Smith make in the non-technical parts of the curriculum, and, more broadly, what the bigger picture stories of student curricular choices might tell us about how they “make meaning” out of engineering. Patterns to be examined include how students choose to satisfy breadth requirements (via distribution across non-technical areas of knowledge vs. minoring in specific non-technical fields), study abroad/away patterns, and how students integrate co-curricular experiences and interests in ways that make each path through the curriculum unique to the individual.