General Card #3599
EDI and EML in Core Engineering Classes: Statics
Summary
A hands-on application project perfect for a statics course, with EDI (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion or DEI) and EML (Entrepreneurial Mindset Learning) focus.
Description
On June 29, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. Originally, the bill authorized the use of $25 billion handled in a Highway Trust Fund, in which federal money as well as state money was used to build the Interstate Highway System. The highways built cut through many neighborhoods and decimated many under-represented minoritized (URM) communities. Currently, there is a push to re-tie these neighborhoods by capping the interstate.
Statics is a core engineering class usually taken in the Sophomore year in engineering tracks. Typically, statics is taught in a lecture-based mode, and includes one or two projects.
This card highlights a new effort at Vanderbilt University that incorporates a lab-based hands-on group final project that spans 7 weeks and illustrates how statics can be used in real-life projects, with a focus on equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in civil engineering. Students in statics included civil engineering, mechanical engineering, engineering science and computer science tracks.
The project is based on structural analysis in statics: Students design a truss using commercial software then build it and test it in the lab. Students also research yielding and buckling, notions typically taught in mechanics of materials, a more advanced course for which statics is a pre-requisite, and check for these types of simple failures.
The project is a prototype for a real-life bridge that re-connects under-represented minoritized communities severed by the discriminatory application of the highway act of 1965. Students reflect on the lessons learned, and how this can help them be a better engineer in the future.
This project allows students to build on the 3Cs: Curiosity, Connections and Creating Value. It opens the door for students to research the effect of civil engineering infrastructure on communities and challenges them to be curious about that effect every time they design a future structure. Students are also being taught to fix problems created by previous generations of engineers in an innovative fashion.
Students are required to reach out to the community and seek their feedback for their project. This allows the creation of connections and simultaneously adds value to their design. Students get to involve the community in their decision-making process, and thereby learn what that community values and how to better serve their needs.
Curiosity
- Demonstrate constant curiosity about our changing world
Students researched how a great idea such as the highway act was used to decimate thriving communities and how it disproportionately affected under-represented minoritized groups. Students were able to see the impact their future designs could have on a grand scale.
Connections
- Integrate information from many sources to gain insight
Students researched diverse sources to understand the benefits of certain legislation, and the effects of a discriminatory application.
Creating Value
- Persist through and learn from failure
Students were able to see how their designs don't always match their fabricated prototypes. This created an opportunity to re-evaluate how the prototype was designed using the commercial software, and students attempted to incorporate amendments in a new iteration of the calculations.
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