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The recently renamed Herbst Program for Engineering, Society, & Ethics offers students the opportunity to improve their writing and ethical awareness

Nora Drewno | Photos Courtesy of Herbst Program

According to Herbst Program Director and Professor Leland Giovannelli, the world isn’t just a bunch of random facts; rather, all events and ideas are interrelated and humans have to understand the origins of these things in order to make sense of those connections.

“It is important to know your actions have consequences. Humans are interconnected in a web of meaning,” Dr. Giovannelli said during an interview with the Colorado Engineer Magazine. “What I try to do is help students make connections between things and create their own web of meaning, so life is not so random and disconnected.”

This lesson is just one of many that engineering students learn when participating in a course under the Herbst Program for Engineering, Ethics and Society. The program, which seeks to enhance the writing skills of all engineering students in the College, recently underwent a name change to better convey its mission.

“We hope our students realize over the course of their studies that there are certain problems and tensions and difficulties in human life; and once you become aware of them, it levels up your ethical awareness,” Dr. Paul Diduch, a Herbst professor, said. He went on to discuss how an improved ethical awareness changes people’s perceptions and sensitivities to problems across the world and that it’s important that students can reflect upon these as engineers. Dr. Diduch also clarified the Herbst Program aims to improve students’ ethical awareness, not their ethics.

Dr. Giovannelli, who has former teaching experience pertaining to the Great Books, the History of Math, and the History of Science at Saint John’s College in Santa Fe, N.M., helped found the Herbst Program. Dr. Giovannelli enjoys teaching engineering students in the Herbst Program for their intelligence, capability, and interest, and, she hopes that students who have taken a Herbst course will have an improved capacity to make mindful and ethical decisions.

“We use the humanities program to make engineering students aware of and to explore their personal and professional responsibilities,” Dr. Giovannelli said. “We don’t necessarily teach engineering ethics; rather, we target students to reflect more on personal ethics, a sense of awakening, and recognize the consequences of their actions. Engineers need to understand the obligation they have to their professional life, to individuals, and to society.”

Herbst courses focus on topics that target engineering student interest. Some of the topics covered include History in Technology, Engineering in Society, Women in Engineering, History of the Oil Industry, the Human Condition, and a Global State of Mind.

The Herbst Program for Engineering, Ethics and Society was founded in 1989 by Clancy Herbst, an engineering graduate from CU Boulder. When Herbst graduated in 1950 and began working in industry, he felt his education as an engineer was too narrow and did not train him for all facets of life. A few years after graduating, Herbst attended a philosophy seminar and found it to be a phenomenal experience, because he had never been asked to reflect upon or defend his philosophical intuition while obtaining his technical engineering degree. During this experience, he realized the power of a group seminar and wanted more people to readily have access to the seminar experience as a learning platform. So, he turned to the College of Engineering.

Each Herbst class is seminar-based and allows students to read a handful of the Great Books—esteemed and historic works—while also actively challenging and engaging themselves in different topics. Using the power of discussion, students use each other’s thoughts to gain a greater perspective.

“Students learn best when they are creating the knowledge for themselves as opposed to someone handing you the answer,” Dr. Giovannelli said. “The world is full of chaos, and confusion and misunderstanding and to be able to come into a room and sit down with intelligent, curious people and to discuss ideas ... that’s really a good thing.”

One unique aspect of the Humanities for Engineers course, HUEN 1010, is the requirement that students attend a live show on campus. These live shows differ per semester, taking the form of plays, musicals, or operas; and they are shows that most engineering students traditionally would not attend, yet they can broaden a student’s cultural horizons. Similarly, upper Herbst courses require students to explore the Denver Art Museum, where they must pick one exhibit and try to recreate the art piece’s work and style.

Global Seminars are another way the Herbst Program tries to present students with authentic cultural experiences. The Global Seminars, which are study abroad Maymester programs, offered are Culture Wars in Rome; Voices in Vienna: Mozart, Freud, & Wittgenstein; and Xi’an, China: SelfAwareness and Images of the Other.

“[We strive to expand] our students’ sense of culture by encouraging them to broaden their cultural horizons, which is something that we pursue hard with study abroad,” Dr. Diduch said. “We don’t think that engineers get enough exposure to culture, given the high demands of their engineering curriculum.” Dr. Diduch is also the program director for Global Seminar Culture Wars in Rome, where students tour Rome, Italy for two weeks and learn of the different cultures that the city is comprised of.

Students who have taken courses under the Herbst Program experience positive outcomes, which align with the program’s goals. Junior Liam Nestelroad, a Global Seminar Culture Wars in Rome student, for example, appreciated getting to talk to other like-minded students in subjects that don’t usually arise in engineering. Parneet Kaur, who took Humanities for Engineers, enjoyed the articulate class discussion around each book d, and found the books were interesting. Viri Varela, who also took Humanities for Engineers, said that like everyone in class, she was included in conversation and found the topics interesting, challenging, and engaging.

“And then our concrete goals are turning engineers into better writers, which might sometimes be an uphill battle,” Dr Diduch shared. While the value of writing is often underestimated, it is an important, applicable skill in the engineering industry. In order to accurately and precisely articulate and convey ideas, whether they are in the engineering field or not, one needs to possess effective writing and oral communication skills.

The Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST), an institute that conducted research as to why technical writing is a valuable skill in engineering, concluded that writing instruction helps students to improve their knowledge through “creativity, critical thinking, communication, innovation, and leadership”. It also decreases plagiarism and grammatical errors and improves punctuation and research skills. The Herbst Program, while it does not directly teach technical writing, is one of the gateways for students to receive feedback and improve upon their basic writing skills.

I consider myself fortunate to have enrolled in a HUEN 1010 section during my first year of college. The topic of the course, which I took with Dr. Giovanelli, was “The Human Condition”, and in that class I was exposed to many insightful texts that allowed, not only my writing skills to improve, but my world view to expand. I learned many lessons, a favorite of which was that “Engineering is practiced in a complex world where simple solutions hardly ever work.” I expect that when I enter my career, I will have the opportunity to reflect back on that class many times.