Filming Engineers

Film and media studies have been substantial fields in liberal arts education since the 1970s. It is only in the last decade, however, that engineering educators have begun to pay attention to the importance of these fields for how they might provide future engineers and applied scientists with valuable interpretive, communicative, and ethical competencies. Given that engineers trained in the United States and abroad are expected not only to exhibit excellent design skills but also management abilities and cultural fluency, film studies offer these students the opportunity to develop all three. Exposing students to film can broaden their understanding of complex historical, cultural, and ethical issues, train them in key forms of visual literacy, and educate them about how technologies make meaning in the world. This chapter suggests three approaches that engineering educators might consider when incorporating film into the engineering curriculum.