The minor in Engineering Systems for Social Good will equip and create space for students to engage with nuanced questions about the complex systems they will encounter in professional engineering contexts. The program provides grounding and practice in designing and analyzing systems relevant to other engineering programs with a view towards fairness, bias, and, ultimately, social good. Its key objectives are to do the following:
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Build common language for students to thrive in nuanced, interdisciplinary contexts.
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Develop key ideas for engineering and analyzing systems toward social good.
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Support the technically robust application of design practices in domain-specific settings.
This minor program requires the completion of 19 units selected from the following courses. McKelvey Engineering students of all disciplines as well as students from related majors in other schools are ideal candidates for this minor. All courses must be taken with a credit option to qualify for the minor.
Probability, Statistics, and Data Foundations
Students must complete one course from the following list:
| Code | Title | Units |
|---|---|---|
| ENGR 3280 | Engineering Statistics With Probability | 3 |
| ESE 3260 | Probability and Statistics for Engineering | 3 |
| SDS 3020 | Elementary to Intermediate Statistics and Data Analysis | 3 |
Systems Design Foundations
Students must complete all courses from the following list:
| Code | Title | Units |
|---|---|---|
| ESE 3590 | Signals, Data and Equity | 3 |
| ESE 4090 | Systems Design for Social Good * | 1 |
- Four courses equaling 12 units must be taken across the two categories of elective courses: either three technical and one contextual or two technical and two contextual.
Technical Electives**
| Code | Title | Units |
|---|---|---|
| BME 4062 | Grand Challenges for Biomedical Engineering | 3 |
| BME 5190 | Advanced Cognitive, Computational, and Systems Neuroscience | 3 |
| CSE 3106 | Social Network Analysis | 3 |
| CSE 4101 | AI and Society | 3 |
| CSE 5205 | Computation in Economics and Social Choice | 3 |
| EECE 3110 | Green Engineering | 3 |
| EECE 5090 | Atmospheric Science and Climate | 3 |
| ESE 3090 | Special Topics in Systems Engineering: Modeling and Design of Social Choice Systems | 3 |
| ESE 4031 | Optimization for Engineered Planning, Decisions and Operations | 3 |
| MEMS 5423 | Sustainable Environmental Building Systems | 3 |
| PSYCH 4631 | Introduction to Computational Cognitive Science | 3 |
| SWPM 6077 | System Dynamics Modeling for Strategic Design | 3 |
Contextual Electives**
| Code | Title | Units |
|---|---|---|
| AFAS 4160 | Engineering Authority: Design, Architecture, and Power in Africa | 3 |
| AMCS 3705 | Topics in Gender and American Culture | 3 |
| ANTHRO 3275 | Introduction to GIS for Anthropologists | 3 |
| ARCH 3404 | Community Building | 3 |
| ARCH 4477 | Segregation By Design: A Historical Analysis of the Impact of Planning and Policy in St. Louis | 3 |
| COMPLITTHT 3120 | Introduction to Digital Humanities | 3 |
| ENST 3530 | Sustainable Cities | 3 |
| ENST 3540 | Environmental Justice | 3 |
| PHIL 2060 | Biomedical Ethics | 3 |
| PHIL 2080 | Introduction to Environmental Ethics | 3 |
| WGSS 1500 | Introduction to Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | 3 |
Additional courses may be added to these lists in the future. Questions about the program can be addressed to Dr. Ben Wormleighton.
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ESE 4090 Systems Design for Social Good is a 1-credit seminar or workshop course to accompany a capstone or undergraduate thesis project in a major program.
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Students may petition for one course outside of those listed to be included as a Domain Elective or as a Contextual Elective (one course in total). The criteria for selecting Domain Electives is that they need to clearly demonstrate the following: 1) a meaningful social good narrative; 2) an emphasis on system design; and 3) training in technical engineering skills.