Connecting community engagement and social justice: The case of intercultural communication

As engineering students and practicing engineers increasingly engage communities in their work, the need for community engagement knowledge has increased. Regardless of the community engagement context, successful community engagement is tied to the success of any given project. That linkage raises important questions: how do engineers learn to effectively engage communities? A course in Intercultural Communication addresses that question and builds on the underlying foundation of six engineering-for-social-justice criteria: listening contextually; identifying structural conditions; acknowledging political agency/mobilizing power; increasing opportunities and resources; reducing imposed risks and harms; and enhancing human capabilities. Assessment data from this pilot study suggests that as students also learn important intercultural communication concepts, they begin to transform their understanding of community engagement and social justice.

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