Chris Swan and his colleagues in the School of Engineering want to know if service learning in engineering education produces better engineers and also if it helps attract women to the field.
Starting this fall, Swan, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, will begin investigating the issue with the support of a recently-awarded $500,000 research grant from the National Science Foundation. It is the first research project to study the potential role of service-learning on improving engineering education and attracting women to the field.
Service learning is a method of teaching and learning that combines an academic curriculum with meaningful community service and reflection aimed at enriching the learning experience.
“Service learning has been a part of engineering education at Tufts and elsewhere for a number of years, but assessing its impact on the quality of engineer we produce has almost always been anecdotal,” Swan says. “We want to get some rigor behind the assessment of whether it actually benefits engineers who undertake these efforts.”
Working closely with Swan will be Linda Jarvin, director of the Center for Enhancement in Learning and Teaching; Christopher Rogers, professor of mechanical engineering; and Adam Carberry, a Ph.D. student.
Examples of service learning include students working as a team to develop a water treatment system in a developing country, or perhaps evaluating an accident prone intersection to design a better traffic control system in this country. In both cases, a service learning approach includes an assessment of community needs that extend beyond strict engineering considerations.
The research project will involve engineering students at Tufts and Purdue University, as well as a broader mix of students participating in Engineers Without Borders, an independent nonprofit organization that involves and trains engineers and engineering students in partnership with developing communities worldwide to improve their quality of life.
Specifically, the research will assess how students view engineering in general, how they perceive themselves as engineers and how they solve engineering problems. The goal is to determine if students who partake in service learning differ along these dimensions compared to students who engage in independent research but not in service learning. Students who participate neither in service learning nor research will serve as a control group.
Results of the study will have significant implications for Tufts and other engineering schools. Swan explains: “If we find that service learning produces a better quality engineer, the justification to make service learning a requirement for the engineering degree becomes stronger, making service learning more likely in the degree’s program.”
Today, women constitute approximately 32% of the students at the Tufts School of Engineering, compared to 15% - 20% nationally. In addition, 40% of engineering students engaged in service learning are women, while the overwhelming majority who engage in independent research are men.
“Good engineering is more than just a matter of mastering technical skills,” says Swan. “It also incorporates soft skills, such as assessing the societal, economic and political impacts of proposed solutions on the community. We want our graduates to develop the skills necessary to be good engineers, as well as be more well-rounded and educated so they can be engineering leaders. We believe service learning helps students develop these skills, but we need to know for sure.”
