Community-based engineering education gives students the professional attributes to tackle humanitarian challenges with transformative impact in communities. Today, when various humanitarian crises are happening, we find that professionals with a set of integrated humanitarian attributes are essential to tackle societal challenges. This is even more critical in advancing skills and education related to engineering to previously disadvantaged or under-represented communities. Nevertheless, evidence on how the needs of stakeholders (academia, industry, quality assurance) align with the integration of humanitarian attributes into engineering curricula is missing.
This chapter presents and discusses the findings of a comparative qualitative study undertaken among higher education institutions, industry and quality assurance agencies in Europe and Asia. Findings reveal how various stakeholders perceive graduate attributes in an attempt to demystify the suitability and effectiveness of engineering education practices within an interdisciplinary, inter-professional humanitarian context.
Background and Rationale
21st-century humanitarian challenges are complex phenomena manifested at variable temporal and spatial scales, affecting society through disruption in economic, political, societal, cultural and institutional systems. This vulnerable situation is promoted in recent UN dialogues, notably the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015 (UN, 2005), Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (UN, 2015) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (UN, 2015); building resilience against humanitarian challenges is central to effective action. Engineering education programmes are considered to be uncreative, boring, male-dominated, having minimum relevance to real-life problems and humanitarian challenges. Inclusive, interdisciplinary education programmes which contribute to the students’ global awareness via a programme of real-life-focused activities starting at first arrival and continuing beyond graduation are needed. In the last decade, education and research in the humanitarian field have often been limited to a disciplinary approach. However, as the Humanitarian contexts such as; resilient infrastructures, process safety, armed conflicts, epidemics, natural or man-made disasters, social exclusion etc., in which humanitarian interventions unfold are more complex than ever, an interdisciplinary perspective can bring new insights. A better understanding of the interplay of engineering, political, economic, social, and medical factors is therefore required.
Engineering programmes are long criticised for being male-dominated, infertile, having minimum relevance to real-life problems, industry and community needs (Gill et al., 2008). Inclusive, interdisciplinary education programmes which enable the students’ global responsibility via creative activities, nurtured even at pre-university level and continuing beyond graduation, are needed (Al Bawada, 2022). It is imperative that we build the capacity of our students and educators to meet the future demands for engineering skills to address them in the places where they are most needed (British Council, 2015), meeting the ever-evolving needs of students, employers and communities in challenging times.
Reliance on increasingly irrelevant curricula, divorced from real-life problems and global challenges, contributes to an exacerbated skills gap, especially in emerging economies, where saving lives, protecting livelihoods, and strengthening recovery from disasters and crises is mostly needed (Unesco, 2014). My practice overturns such outdated traditional educational models, which artificially separate knowledge, disciplines, and skills (Asian Development Bank, 2015).
To this respect, a contemporary educational programme targeting humanitarian challenges should aim at offering a co-evolutionary, innovative, conceptual framework (Kelley and Knowles, 2016) in graduate engineering education, ensuring: (a) explicit and implicit links to resilience and transformative change; (b) integration of highly diverse, yet complementary, expertise and skills; (c) promotion of innovative pedagogical developments across different disciplines and sectors to have a global humanitarian impact. Institutional reforms in the curriculum of graduate and engineering programmes, but also for society, may be necessary after re-evaluating the importance of humanitarian intervention.
The current Chapter presents the outcomes of a wide online survey in order to reveal the perception of Higher Educational Institutions in different countries and with different cultures for modern graduate engineering programmes targeting humanitarian challenges versus the actual needs and perceptions of the Industry sector and the Quality Assessment Authorities.