A new course in the Department of Mechanical Engineering will enable engineers to make a greater real-world impact by equipping them to navigate complex problems that don’t have clear solutions and are highly interconnected and interdisciplinary.
“The long-term trajectory of different technologies is often driven by or connected with policy and economics, so being able to understand the broader context is a valuable skill for engineers who want to make a difference in benefitting society, whether they are working in industry or in academia,” says Eric Kazyak, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at UW-Madison.
That’s why Kazyak created a new course, Engineering Sustainability: Linking Technology, Policy, Health and Economics, which is open to undergraduates and graduate students. In the course, students develop a variety of versatile skills, including communication and learning how to critically assess technologies based on a mix of real-world factors such as policy, regulations, economics and health impacts.
For one assignment, Kazyak tasked students with analyzing the effectiveness of any existing policy, in the United States or abroad, related to a technology of their choice—for example, long-duration energy storage, residential solar or fast-charging electric vehicles. Then, the students needed to propose a new intervention to support that technology. The assignment required students to consider how they would implement and fund the intervention as well as the societal impacts of the technology.
The students also leveled up their communication and policy chops through an engaging debate exercise. He divided the students into technology-themed teams—alternative liquid fuels, hydrogen and battery electric vehicle. On each team, students took on different roles: technology expert, health expert, policy expert and an opposition researcher.
Each team delivered a 10-minute presentation to a panel of leaders of a fictional country, attempting to persuade them to invest in the team’s technology as the best solution for meeting the majority of the country’s energy needs. The teams then had five minutes to ask questions and form rebuttals to the other teams, followed by a second round of arguments. At the conclusion, Kazyak led the class in a discussion about how this exercise could be applicable to real-world scenarios.
“There were students who did a complete 180-degree turn on certain technologies, who said, ‘I thought this technology shouldn’t even be in the discussion, but I see now that, in certain cases, it makes a lot of sense.’ It was a really informative activity,” Kazyak says.
Kazyak says these activities also give students valuable practice in having productive and substantive discussions with people who have different viewpoints about a technology or sustainability challenge.
For their final project, students worked in teams to create educational board games that covered concepts learned in the course. Kazyak, who taught the course for the first time in spring 2024, says it has been very well-received by students and he’s incorporating their feedback to further enhance the educational experience.
Featured image caption: Students play an educational game that they created in the Engineering Sustainability: Linking Technology, Policy, Health and Economics course. Submitted photo.