A Few Observations About Engineering Programs as a “Left/Right” Issue

I’ve gotten a whiff of a sentiment about the engineering program currently being developed (full disclosure, I’m a participant in that process) at Lee University. I understand that some are of the opinion that it’s being brought into the university as a way of moving things to the left. Since I came into Lee in the wake of this altercation, I am alive to the potential effects of a sentiment like this growing.

Without second guessing the motivations of anyone involved in the process, I think a couple of facts are in order:

• Engineering faculty tend to be the most conservative faculty on campus in places where there is an engineering program. Defining “conservative” can be tricky but engineering faculties tend to be the most Republican on campus, identification shifting progressively bluer with other disciplines. I have seen this on numerous occasions but cannot pin down the source.
• Hard sciences in general and engineering in particular don’t have the corrosive effects on people’s faith journey as other disciplines do, as this study suggests (update would be appreciated.) This is true in spite of (or perhaps because of) the general education component of the curriculum. (There’s also an ongoing shoving match between the Gen Ed and Engineering people about the former crowding out the requirements of the latter in state schools where the total credit hours to graduate are limited.)

As for me personally, I made the following observation when I first accepted Lee’s offer to teach:

The second point, in a sense, leads me to why I am departing my 20+ years of teaching geotechnical engineering in a university setting. This fall, Lord willing, I will begin teaching at Lee University, my church’s institution of higher learning. They are beginning an engineering program which has not developed to the point of being discipline-specific. I think, however, that Lee needs an engineering program, its students need the option of one, and that the liberal arts centred educational system, one we inherited from the British and have had since before the Republic began, has failed us, not only in producing a leadership class totally incapable of informed decision on technological issues, but also bereft of what Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole called Logic, or the Art of Thinking. Much of this is an outcome of the same era as the anti-nuclear movement; we have replaced a pursuit of understanding with a pursuit of raw power, and the end result will be that we will end up with neither.

There are many more things I could say on this subject, but I have said much already over the years on this topic, and will gladly discuss it with anyone in the future.