[Themaintainers] Imaginary Projects for Making Maintainers: Engineering Education and an Ethics of Care

[Lee Vinsel]

Dear Maintainers,

Andy Russell and I are writing an essay for a forthcoming edited volume
titled _Can Innovators Be Made?_. As its title "Making Maintainers"
suggests, our essay argues that our education system should focus as much
or more effort on making essential maintainers. In this essay, we are
focusing particularly on college engineering education, for several
reasons, including because it is close to our experiences at Stevens
Institute of Technology and elsewhere and because engineering education has
become a hotbed of innovation-speak.

In one section of our essay, we point out that undergraduate engineering
degrees often culminate in senior design projects, which in recent decades
have become framed in terms of innovation. And YET, many (most?) engineers
will go onto work in Maintainers-y positions that will have little or
nothing to do with innovation but will instead be centered on keeping
complex technological systems going.

For this reason, it may make sense to have engineering students also work
on maintenance projects. I have thought up a couple: one in which students
would work with physical plant managers at their college campuses; another
focused on maintaining/conserving wetlands. But I also imagined that people
on this list would have great ideas, which is why I'm coming to you.

What do you think?

I'm happy to hear all kinds of thoughts, including "That's a *terrible*
idea!!!" But I'm primarily looking for hypothetical maintenance projects
for college seniors.

Thanks!

Lee Vinsel




-- 
Assistant Professor and Director,
Program on Science and Technology Studies
College of Arts and Letters
Stevens Institute of Technology
Hoboken, NJ 07030
leevinsel.com
Twitter: @STS_News
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