Teaching First-year Students to See Infrastructure Issues as Equity Issues

The fundamental role of civil infrastructure in helping to ameliorate or further exacerbate social inequities has become increasingly clear in recent years. In order to make more equitable decisions in how we plan, design, operate, and manage our infrastructure, civil engineers need to better understand the fundamental and ubiquitous role of infrastructure in society. This paper describes three first-year courses that address equity and infrastructure in different ways. At Lafayette College, a small, private liberal arts college, a first-semester course is focused on urban infrastructure and equity as a subject for critical reading and writing. At Gonzaga University, a medium-size private university, a first-year seminar is designed as a multidisciplinary exploration of infrastructure and equity. One of the primary learning outcomes of the course is to differentiate the ways in which knowledge is constructed across multiple disciplines, so infrastructure's impact on society is viewed through the lens of sociology, history, public health, economics, and engineering. At the University of Colorado Boulder, a large research-intensive university, a 1-credit civil engineering seminar course touches on the topic of infrastructure equity through the lenses of engineering ethics and sustainability. In all three courses, students created concept maps for “equitable infrastructure” at the end of the semester. The concept maps revealed differences in student ideas that reflect the different approaches taken in the courses. Analysis of these concept maps yields insight into student learning on equitable infrastructure and can provide guidance for others wishing to incorporate equity into first-year and/or civil engineering coursework.