Jon Leydens
Jon A. Leydens is Associate Professor of Engineering Education Research and Communication in the Division of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Colorado School of Mines, USA. Dr. Leydens' research and teaching interests include engineering education, social justice, and communication. He is co-author of Engineering and Sustainable Community Development (Morgan and Claypool, 2010) and editor of Sociotechnical Communication in Engineering (Routledge, 2014). Dr. Leydens’ current research focuses on rendering visible the social justice dimensions inherent in three components of the engineering curriculum—in engineering sciences, engineering design, and humanities and social science courses. That research, conducted with co-author Juan C. Lucena, culminated in Engineering Justice: Transforming Engineering Education and Practice (Wiley-IEEE Press, 2018).
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Books by Jon Leydens
Engineering Justice offers thought-provoking chapters on: why social justice is inherent yet often invisible in engineering education and practice; engineering design for social justice; social justice in the engineering sciences; social justice in humanities and social science courses for engineers; and transforming engineering education and practice. In addition, this book:
Provides a transformative framework for engineering educators in service learning, professional communication, humanitarian engineering, community service, social entrepreneurship, and social responsibility
Includes strategies that engineers on the job can use to advocate for social justice issues and explain their importance to employers, clients, and supervisors
Discusses diversity in engineering educational contexts and how it affects the way students learn and develop
Engineering Justice is an important book for today’s professors, administrators, and curriculum specialists who seek to produce the best engineers of today and tomorrow.
Papers by Jon Leydens
Engineering Justice offers thought-provoking chapters on: why social justice is inherent yet often invisible in engineering education and practice; engineering design for social justice; social justice in the engineering sciences; social justice in humanities and social science courses for engineers; and transforming engineering education and practice. In addition, this book:
Provides a transformative framework for engineering educators in service learning, professional communication, humanitarian engineering, community service, social entrepreneurship, and social responsibility
Includes strategies that engineers on the job can use to advocate for social justice issues and explain their importance to employers, clients, and supervisors
Discusses diversity in engineering educational contexts and how it affects the way students learn and develop
Engineering Justice is an important book for today’s professors, administrators, and curriculum specialists who seek to produce the best engineers of today and tomorrow.
Prior to 1998, Māori and Pasifika students experienced significant struggles in engineering education at The University of Auckland, so our research question focuses on the means by which such students within the 5R Program reached such high achievement levels, including what programmatic elements boosted their success. To explain and provide a conceptual framework for the mechanisms of inclusive excellence, we focus on a case study of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, using a published framework that includes six Engineering-for-Social-Justice (E4SJ) criteria.
Each E4SJ criterion raises critical questions that unveil different reasons why the 5R Program succeeded, and collectively the E4SJ criteria serve as a prism through which to view the 5R Program’s effective retention, recruitment, and performance strategies. The paper concludes with applicable lessons for recruitment and retention programs that focus on and can be adapted for students from multiple cultural and indigenous backgrounds as well as lessons for programs that work to foster the success of underrepresented students generally.
has grown significantly since the 1990s. Before launching a humanitarian engineering ethics (HEE) graduate project, we needed to understand the barriers and opportunities involved
in starting such an initiative. To investigate these barriers and opportunities, we conducted semi-structured interviews and participant observations in multiple contexts using comparative analysis to identify emergent categories in the interview data. Three dimensions within knowledge valuation were found to be the most significant barriers to implementing HEE – knowledge organization , content, and hierarchy. Knowledge valuation includes a resistance to non-quantitative solutions that emanates from the way in which knowledge is organized, characterized, and valued. Specifically, the organization of knowledge in engineering education can prevent meaningful inter- or multidisciplinary collaboration. The focus of engineering education on the Engineering Problem Solving (EPS) method can hinder understanding of human needs as a critical component in engineering work. Finally, diverse knowledge hierarchies affect HEE implementation, especially in terms of devaluations of small grants, design, service learning, teaching, and low-tech solutions. Interviewees suggested opportunities for addressing these barriers, and we make recommendations based on these findings.
interviews, journals, and student-generated creative content, from which emerged the lived-experience narratives of female undergraduate STEM students with multiple underrepresented identities. Findings of this study show that underrepresented students exert hidden efforts that the current engineering meritocracy does not know of, value, account for, or understand. This culture manifests itself as a lack of time and flexibility to rest and maintain control over one’s life and well-being. From the perspective of
students with embodied differences, like physical and learning disabilities, this conception of rigor dehumanizes and removes their dignity, which can exacerbate mental health issues that many neurodivergent students already struggle with. Importantly, the participants’ narratives show how they
actively resisted the culture and developed practices of self-care.