Actioning social justice into the engineering curriculum

Historically, engineering practice has been a source of social harm and environmental degradation which disproportionately affects the health, welfare, safety, and freedoms of people from racial and ethnic minoritized groups, as well as creating disparity for those in other commonly marginalized groups based on sex, sexual identity, age, disability, socioeconomic status, and geographic location. Currently, engineering education perpetuates, rather than disrupts, the shortcomings produced from the status quo of engineering design and practice. Yet, changes to engineering education could facilitate the transformation of the engineering practice into one that centers social justice. This transformation will require a rethinking of the curriculum and the faculty expertise necessary to enact it. This paper illustrates a shift from status quo engineering culture by outlining our teaching praxis of engineering social justice. In exploring this proposed praxis, we juxtapose how faculty instruct the customary model of engineering sustainability against a 'just sustainabilities' model rooted in our proposed social justice mindset. We conclude with a call to action for faculty, administrators, and institutions to transform the engineering curriculum. Through actioning an actively anti-oppressive socially just praxis of engineering, engineers would be better prepared to intentionally and collaboratively center the needs of communities historically harmed by the practice of engineering.