Student engagement with a humanitarian engineering pathway

Abstract

The number of undergraduate degree programmes incorporating humanitarian engineering experiences and curriculum has increased significantly since the turn of the century. This paper describes a humanitarian engineering pathway embedded across all four years of an undergraduate engineering degree at an Australian university. Student participation in the pathway and their motivations were evaluated from quantitative enrolment data and anonymous surveys and compared to an overall student baseline. This found a higher percentage of students engaged in humanitarian engineering were female, domestic and involved in extra-curricular activities compared to the overall student baseline. Most students engaging with the pathway were motivated by opportunities to apply their engineering; some highlighting this was to have an impact on societal issues. Recommendations are made for research to further understand student engagement as well as suggestions for initiatives to address potential challenges as humanitarian engineering education continues to expand across Australasia.