Integrating the humanities with engineering through a course in the rise of modern science

The goal of integrating the humanities with engineering education is implied by the ABET requirement that “the humanities and social sciences must be planned to reflect a rationale or fulfil an objective appropriate to the engineering profession and course work in the humanities and social sciences must be an integral part of the engineering program.” One way to integrate the humanities into engineering curricula is by creating humanities courses which are integrated with science and engineering courses taken in the freshman year. We modified an existing history course on the rise of modern science so that it was integrated with the first physics course (mechanics) taken by engineers. Integration with the physics course was accomplished in two ways. The course material for both courses deals with the same material-Newton´s laws, the discoveries of Galileo, Hooke, Keppler, etc. The physics course concentrates on the mathematics of these discoveries and their physical applications, while the history course focuses on the cultural environment and consequences of these discoveries. Secondly, there is chronological integration-students study the times of Newton and other discoverers at the same time they are studying about their laws. This paper contains a description of this course, a post-mortem of what worked and what did not, the results of an assessment, and recommendations for the design of such courses in the future