A junior course in engineering design and society

As part of an NSF grant, the College of Engineering at the University of Hartford is developing an interdisciplinary course in engineering practice. The purpose of the course is to introduce engineering students to the factors such as impact on society, political concerns, cultural concerns, that significantly affect their engineering design process, but are traditionally not part of a quantitative engineering design. A major focus of the course is communication. To be successful, an engineer must be able to communicate his/her results to a variety of interested individuals, stakeholders and bodies, both technical and non-technical. The paper discusses the course.