Would It Naturally Happen? – Faith and Engineering Integration at a Christian University

About Would It Naturally Happen? – Faith and Engineering Integration at a Christian University

Abstract

In 2016, at Eastern Mennonite University, we started a new Engineering program. We emphasize service-learning experiences in our program. Students are also required to take core curriculum courses in areas such as Christian faith in our university. With the help of these builtin curricular elements, does faith animating learning (Davis 2017) in engineering happen on its own, or do we need to do something more deliberately to achieve it? This is a particularly important question for us to address when developing and implementing our engineering curriculum. To that end, I have conducted surveys and interviews with students in the Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) club to learn about how they have experienced faith and learning in the engineering program at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU), with a goal of a systematic approach to integrating faith into our engineering curriculum. From this study, I found that students understood the importance of serving others and recognized the importance of Biblical morality in engineering study and practice. However, they are less sure about using Biblical illustrations and presenting Biblical truth to address issues in engineering. Students would like to see examples of faith in action in real-world situations and desire systematically organized discussions about faith and engineering. They noted that the service projects in the ESW club have helped them gain knowledge of faith applied in engineering. This study has helped us decide to include a unit on faith and engineering integration in the Engineering Ethics course. Students also expressed that they would appreciate group discussions with various topics and different group sizes.