LITERATURE REVIEW OF THE KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS THAT ENABLE ENGINEERS TO PARTICIPATE IN PUBLIC POLICY

The role of engineers in public policy can be seen as a twofold endeavor: (1) to help create public policy related to the utilization of technology to solve public problems, as well as monitor and assure compliance with such policies; and (2) to use engineering knowledge to assist in the construction of policy directives to help solve social problems. The engineering education community agrees that it is noteworthy that students increase their understanding of different public policy issues. One example is related with its creation and evaluation. Different courses have been created to reach this purpose. However, there are curricular questions in which explicit or suggested answers are needed to promote the dialogue around them and build consensus. Two of those questions are related with the knowledge and skills that engineering students must obtain in order to be able to participate in the creation and evaluation of Public Policy issues. The results of a literature review are presented here among with the evidences that support it. Some topics related with the knowledge that engineering students should develop to succeed in public policy are the history of engineers in public policy, how public policy affect the technical field, from where the public policy emerges, the policy making process, and the knowledge of how to write of a public policy. In the same way, different skills will be presented as emerged from the literature review. Some of them are: being able to identify and use the correct discourse depending of the audience, the ability to make decisions after assessing different possible solutions based on different attributes, the understanding of ethical situations, and appreciation of complexities and problems with open-ended questions.