Dwayne, I agree that a more hands-on environment does more for students' understanding and appreciation of other cultures. My EWB group learned not only about the community we were serving alongside, but also about each other.
When we were sitting together in the library one day, a friend told us we looked like the university's diversity posters. It hadn't occurred to us until he jokingly pointed it out. One girl's parents are from Nigeria, one guy was from China, one girl was a redhead from the South, and I have my Cherokee grandmother's darker complexion and am from the Midwest/South dividing line. We learned so much just from talking while working on our project and on our down time during our project trip.
To respond to Bill assertion that this is already done... not exactly. Often students get to pick their own groups, and they choose their friends. Or the nature of the project allows it to be divided and worked on separately until the last minute.
I wish more kids had opportunities to experience diverse cultures at a young age. We have students in our university from tiny rural farming communities that had only known other white people before college. Other students hadn't ever had a white kid in their class because of the country they had lived in.
I highly encourage any student that has the chance to go abroad during college. It could be a week or two long trip with an organization like EWB, a summer study abroad, or a longer study program.
Some universities also have programs where you can be a language exchange partner with someone learning English or be a buddy to an exchange student.
First-hand experiences and cross-cultural conversations add new perspectives in a way a textbook or lecture can't. I'm not sure if/how those kinds of experiences get added to degree requirements, but I think there is a lot of potential benefit there.
What I do know is that I learned as much or more about Latin American culture in my 8 week program in Costa Rica than I did in 8 years of formal Spanish study. Those 8 years were full of cultural lessons, but classroom experiences fall short of long conversations and being there.
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Heidi Wallace EI,P.E.,M.ASCE
P.E.
Tulsa OK
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-21-2020 11:27 AM
From: Dwayne Culp
Subject: Engineering a Culture of Inclusion in the Face of Injustice
Bill:
The question I was responding to was whether we had to create a course to make engineers more tolerant of those in other cultures. I think it is foolish to believe that we can use a class on culture to teach how other cultures feel, think, and act will make us more tolerant of each other. The correct way of making us understand other cultures is to immerse people in opportunities to experience those cultures. My suggestion that a class on cultural immersion would have little value, because in order to create a test for it, we would end up creating one of two conditions: A completely date and name based test or a completely essay based perception of other cultures themed writing exercise. Neither of which would cause people to immerse themselves in different cultures, even though writing essays would probably benefit most engineers.
In order to teach people about different cultures, we need to bring people of different cultures together, and do something important together. It works best in small groups, so groups of no less than three and no more than five would work best. Instead of allowing the groups to choose their teams, the teams should be assigned by the professor to promote diversity. The trick is finding something meaningful to do. Engineers without Borders, and groups like them have found ways of doing it. The question is how to do it locally so that we can provide a learning opportunity while doing something meaningful? I know that there are lots of opportunities.
Our school system is really good at teaching children to play well with each other. In fact, I sometimes think that is all that they teach until 3rd grade. My children received grades on 5 items on related to behavior and 3 items based on class content for each of the subjects that they learned until middle school and 6th grade. I think cultural tolerance is perfectly aligned with that age group. By the time they are adults and attending college, cultural tolerance, and playing nice with others should be pretty strongly incorporated into their life. I remember my sons' cub scout meetings in respective living rooms. We had children from 3 different continents, and 5 different native languages for their parents. When you combined all the dens at Cub camps, it was very cool because we had food, entertainment, and games from each of those cultural traditions. I think that is the way to teach cultural tolerance, through immersion and inclusion, not in a classroom.
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Dwayne Culp, Ph.D., Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE
Culp Engineering, LLC
Rosenberg TX
Original Message:
Sent: 07-19-2020 12:27 PM
From: William Hayden
Subject: Engineering a Culture of Inclusion in the Face of Injustice
Regarding the comments:
"I do not think a specific course needs to be offered. I believe the best way of addressing Inclusion at an education level is to give people a chance to work together on projects in a mixed cultural environment. Let the engineering students learn by working together that each of has strengths and weaknesses, and that these strengths and weaknesses have nothing to do with cultural or racial backgrounds. Require students to work with those that are culturally different."
Of course, I may be dead-nuts wrong, but aren't the above comments ~almost~ what most . . .not all…Civil Engineering programs have been doing?
Can you imagine a group of CE students who had not yet been schooled in say, "Principles of Watershed Analysis," and "Basic Hydraulics," being told to get together and determine a town's 7 year capital improvement plan?
"Ridiculous Proposition!" might be your first reaction.
Then what, pray tell, makes CEs believe the most highly complex natural element on Planet Earth, P E O P L E, can simply be put together and "learn-by-failing" because they were never deliberately schooled about matters more complex than "Indeterminate Structural Analysis?"
Unless and until those who are charged with preparing our women and men to first understand themselves, and then what to do and how to do it with their engineering colleagues who have natural and different perspectives, "Throwing them into a work group and telling them to just make it happen" is evidence of non-compos mentis.
p.s. BTW, I am confident that the statement "and that these strengths and weaknesses have nothing to do with cultural or racial backgrounds" was just a "Test" to see who else would realize these terms are by definition part of the commonly undefined reasons "Why good people do not play nice together."
Stay Healthy!
Cheers,
Bill
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William M. Hayden Jr., Ph.D., P.E., CMQ/OE, F.ASCE
Buffalo, N.Y.
"It is never too late to be what you might have been." -- George Eliot 1819 - 1880
Original Message:
Sent: 06-11-2020 01:53 PM
From: Dwayne Culp
Subject: Engineering a Culture of Inclusion in the Face of Injustice
Regarding question 1.
I do not think a specific course needs to be offered. I believe the best way of addressing Inclusion at an education level is to give people a chance to work together on projects in a mixed cultural environment. Let the engineering students learn by working together that each of has strengths and weaknesses, and that these strengths and weaknesses have nothing to do with cultural or racial backgrounds. Require students to work with those that are culturally different. I suggest that most engineering curricula have plenty of opportunities to create teamwork opportunities, and it is up to the engineering departments to make these teamwork projects opportunities to work with different people from different backgrounds. It is easier to understand the culture of others when you have had opportunities to work with them in a professional or educational project environment.
Do I think that this is something that can easily be added to 1 hour seminar classes that I had to take each semester. You better believe it. It would not be hard to have presentations by those of different cultures as part of the weekly speaker program. Having them spend 10 minutes of their hour conversation talking about their experiences through school and beyond which could include the cultural barriers that they overcame would be a great use of everyone's time.
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Dwayne Culp, Ph.D., Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE
Culp Engineering, LLC
Rosenberg TX
Original Message:
Sent: 06-10-2020 04:47 PM
From: Tirza Austin
Subject: Engineering a Culture of Inclusion in the Face of Injustice
Many thanks to all who joined us for our Special Edition of Thursdays @ 3 - Engineering a Culture of Inclusion in the Face of Injustice. You can access the recording here. I wanted to share two questions that we were not able to discuss during the roundtable today and have asked our panelists to share their perspectives in the thread.
I look forward to continuing the conversation here.
Question 1:
Many universities offer course(s) on leadership, entrepreneurialism, professional development and ethics. How could these types of courses offer an opportunity for D & I topics? What are the most successful modalities for these topics? Case studies, books, articles, dialogue?
Question 2:
Hello, I'm an EIT at an old-school civil engineering firm. I'm also trying to find ways that I impact change in my company and its practices. I'm drafting a letter to the owners of my company asking them to first issue a statement of support to the black members of our company and community in a company-wide email. I'm framing the request as its the ethical responsibility of civil engineers to protect the public and look towards change when the systems we design fail to do this. I would like to offer other actions that we as a company can take moving forward, like encouraging employees to get involved in volunteering opportunities in the community. What are your thoughts on these actions?
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Tirza Austin
Manager, Online Community
American Society of Civil Engineers
1801 Alexander Bell Drive
Reston, VA 20191
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