In episode two of Sketch Model, Sara is joined by scholars Matthew Wisnioski and James Malazita, as the series takes a look at the history of engineering education to find some clues about how we got to the familiar pattern of depoliticization in engineering education. Why do social and political concerns about technology come up regularly for engineers only to be smothered pretty easily, by a sense that technological progress is inevitable and impossible to tame?

Wisnioski is an interdisciplinary historian in science technology and society at Virginia Tech, a senior fellow at the Institute for Creativity, the Arts and Technology and a co-founder of the Human Centered Design, Interdisciplinary Graduate Education program. Malazita is assistant professor in science and technology studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with an appointment in the program in Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences.

Sketch Model / Presented by Olin College of Engineering is a new audio series about the engineering classroom and how the humanistic disciplines of the arts, the humanities and the social sciences shape the "why" and "should" questions about the technologies we build. The podcast will talk about some of the surprising trends that are happening in engineering education now and will discuss the history of ethics and politics among engineers over the last century.

Download the episode transcript

Sketch Model is created, hosted, and produced by Sara Hendren and edited by Brian Funck.
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