TY - CHAP A1 - Leicht-Scholten, Carmen A1 - Steuer-Dankert, Linda A1 - Bouffier, Anna T1 - Facing Future Challenges: Building Engineers for Tomorrow T2 - Conference proceedings : new perspectives in science education : 5th Conference edition, Florence, Italy, 17-18 March 2016 N2 - Future engineers are increasingly confronted with the so-called Megatrends which are the big social challenges society has to cope with. These Megatrends, such as “Silver Society”, “Globalization”, “Mobility” and “Female Shift” require an application-oriented perspective on Diversity especially in the engineering field. Therefore, it is necessary to enable future engineers not only to look at the technical perspectives of a problem, but also to be able to see the related questions within societies they are developing their artefacts for. The aim of teaching engineering should be to prepare engineers for these requirements and to draw attention to the diverse needs in a globalized world. Bringing together technical knowledge and social competences which go beyond a mere training of the so-called “soft skills”, is a new approach followed at RWTH Aachen University, one of the leading technical universities in Germany. RWTH Aachen University has established the bridging professorship “Gender and Diversity in Engineering” (GDI) which educates engineers with an interdisciplinary approach to expand engineering limits. In the frame of a sustainable teaching concept the research group under the leadership of Prof. Carmen Leicht-Scholten has developed an approach which imparts a supplication-specific Gender and Diversity expertise to engineers. In workshops students gain theoretical knowledge about Gender and Diversity and learn how to transfer their knowledge in their special field of study and later work. To substantiate this, the course participants have to solve case studies from real life. The cases which are developed in collaboration with non-profit organizations and enterprises from economy rise the students to challenges which are inspired by professional life. Evaluation shows the success of this approach as well as an increasing demand for such teaching formats. KW - Diversity KW - Engineering Education KW - Gender KW - Higher Education Y1 - 2016 SN - 978-886292-705-5 SP - 32 EP - 37 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Steuer-Dankert, Linda A1 - Bouffier, Anna A1 - Gaedicke, Sonja A1 - Leicht-Scholten, Carmen T1 - Diversifying engineering education: a transdisciplinary approach from RWTH Aachen University T2 - Strategies for increasing diversity in engineering majors and careers N2 - Engineers and therefore engineering education are challenged by the increasing complexity of questions to be answered globally. The education of future engineers therefore has to answer with curriculums that build up relevant skills. This chapter will give an example how to bring engineering and social responsibility successful together to build engineers of tomorrow. Through the integration of gender and diversity perspectives, engineering research and teaching is expanded with new perspectives and contents providing an important potential for innovation. Aiming on the enhancement of engineering education with distinctive competencies beyond technical expertise, the teaching approach introduced in the chapter represents key factors to ensure that coming generations of engineers will be able to meet the requirements and challenges a changing globalized world holds for them. The chapter will describe how this approach successfully has been implemented in the curriculum in engineering of a leading technical university in Germany. Y1 - 2017 SN - 9781522522126 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-2212-6.ch010 SP - 201 EP - 235 PB - IGI Global CY - Hershey, USA ER -