IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021 - 50

Commentary
Commentary
Care and Liberation in Creating a
Student-Led Public Interest Technology
Clinic
Shreya Chowdhary, Sam Daitzman,
Ruby Eisenbud, Emma Pan, and Erhardt Graeff
Olin College of Engineering, Needham,
MA 02492 USA
 EnginEErs disEngagE from public welfare concerns
during undergraduate engineering education [1].
In her widely cited study, Erin Cech argued that this
arises from a culture of depoliticization in engineering
that dismisses " nontechnical " concerns and competencies,
reifying a false technical/social dichotomy and
meritocratic ideology that justifies existing social structures.
Our college, Olin College of Engineering, was part
of that study, displaying similar patterns to more traditional
schools. We are resisting that trend by embracing
" public interest technology " (PIT) [2], which we believe
offers a response to the culture of disengagement. In
our application, PIT represents a community of practice
that encourages engineers to fully engage with context,
inequity, and uncertainty; to connect technical work to
their own lives and environment; and to prioritize the
common good while minimizing public harms.
In 2019, we-four undergraduate women engineering
students and their faculty advisor-cocreated a
student-led PIT clinic (called " PInT1 " ). Olin College is a
tight-knit community well acquainted with team-based
experiential learning, student cocreation of curriculum,
and commitment
to gender balance, diversity,
and inclusion. Care for others is a core value shared
among Olin's faculty, staff, and 350 students. PInT is our
vehicle for promoting a culture of engagement at Olin.
1 http://pint.olin.edu
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2021.3101915
Date of current version: 2 September 2021.
50
0278-0097/21©2021 IEEE
Key initiatives include PIT speaker events, community-wide
discussions,
student-run skill
shares (see
Figure 1), technical consulting projects with community
partners, and a student-driven PIT summer fellowship.
Our approach embodies an ethic of care and
creates engineering learning experiences in the mold
of liberatory education.
During summer and fall 2020, we conducted a
collaborative autoethnography to analyze and synthesize
our experiences cocreating PInT. We individually
reflected on why we joined PInT and how it
affected our identities. We used affinity mapping and
interactive discussions to identify three meta-themes
that describe the essence and value of PInT: prioritizing
emotion and relationships, embracing slowness
and deliberation, and claiming student ownership.
Prioritizing emotions
By prioritizing our emotions and wellbeing and
integrating them with our work, we oppose the hierarchical
gendered dualisms prevalent in engineering
that devalue work with people in favor of " masculine
instrumentalism " [3], [4] and contribute to the culture
of disengagement [1].
For example, we begin meetings with check-ins
about our emotional state in addition to the status of
our technical work, and we invite new members to
reflect on what they need for support and emotional
safety (see Figure 2). Assuming responsibility for
every team member's social and mental wellbeing
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
http://pint.olin.edu
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021
