A leader of engineering education urged more than 600 of her colleagues on Thursday to change the prevailing model of globalization, with its emphasis on increased efficiency, to better incorporate the sustainability of society and the environment.
“We can no longer think only about profit,” said Caroline Baillie, the DuPont Chair in Engineering Education Research and Development at Queens University in Ontario, at the plenary address at the 38th annual Frontiers in Education Conference, hosted by the College in Saratoga Springs.
“I remind my students that engineers must have a sense of ‘response-ability,’” she said. “Students need to be able to respond to problems that once were perceived to be out of their area.”
Baillie spoke on "Engineering for a Just and Sustainable Future."
She described projects in Lesotho, South Africa, and Buenos Aries, Argentina, in which she is working to promote economic sustainability with populations that have been marginalized by economic and political forces out of their control. “I consider myself a guinea pig [in determining engineers can do to help],” she said.
Stephen C. Ainlay, president of Union College, opened the plenary session with a short history lesson. Union inaugurated its engineering programs in the mid-19th century, a time when the nation’s rapid growth caused a demand for professionals to build an infrastructure. Early engineering programs at Union ran alongside the traditional liberal arts curriculum with very little intersection, he said. “Today, engineering is no longer parallel to the liberal arts,” he said. “Engineers must be part a part of the liberal arts so that we can confront the challenges we face today.”
Union was the first liberal arts college to offer engineering, in 1845.
Cherrice Traver, dean of engineering at Union, is general chair of the FIE conference that gathered 600 educators and professionals from nearly 300 institutions and 34 countries. Conference topics include globalization, diversity and the role of feminism in engineering education.
Previous FIE conferences have been hosted by Georgia Tech, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Johns Hopkins University.