Work in progress — Developing a curriculum to prepare engineers to participate in public policy

With the increasing proliferation of scientific knowledge and technological artifacts into society comes an increased need to regulate these artifacts and their use. The development and implementation of such regulations and laws in many cases requires both a technical understanding of the functioning of these artifacts and an understanding of how this technology interacts with social and natural systems, and would benefit from the involvement of a technical expert. Clearly, there is an important role to be filled by engineers in the public policy arena. However, there are very few engineers participating in public policymaking and very few engineering programs offer or encourage courses of study in policy. While there is agreement in the engineering education community that an increased focus on Engineering and Public Policy is a good idea, very little empirical evidence has been assembled to guide the establishment of these courses and programs. This paper reports on the development of an initiative at one university to develop a public policy curriculum for engineers that can easily be integrated into the existing engineering program.