Creating a Culture of Art in an Engineering Education

Paper ID #34857

Building STEAM: Creating a Culture of Art in an Engineering Education

Dr. Katherine Hennessey Wikoff, Milwaukee School of Engineering

Katherine Wikoff is a professor in the Humanities, Social Science, and Communication Department at Milwaukee School of Engineering, where she Is a member of the UX faculty and teaches courses in communication, ﬁlm/media studies, and political science. She has a B.A. in political science from Wright State University and an M.A. and PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Mr. James R. Kieselburg, Milwaukee School of Engineering

Director and Curator, Grohmann Museum at Milwaukee School of Engineering Adjunct Professor, Visual Design, Milwaukee School of Engineering Margaret T. Dwyer, Milwaukee School of Engineering

Margaret Dwyer has been a faculty member of the Milwaukee School of Engineering since 2007. Before coming to the classroom, she spent 15 years working for the state of Wisconsin as a publications edi- tor. She received a Bachelor’s Degree from Marquette University, a Master’s Degree from University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her teaching credentials from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She lives in the Milwaukee area. Dr. Candela Marini, Milwaukee School of Engineering

Candela Marini is an Assistant Professor at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, where she co-directs the University Scholars Honors Program and coordinates the Spanish minor. She specializes in 19th- century Latin American history, with a focus on visual culture. She has published numerous articles on Latin American visual culture and literature.

c American Society for Engineering Education, 2021 Building STEAM: Creating a Culture of Art in an Engineering Education

Abstract

This paper discusses an ongoing, successful effort to create a culture of art at a STEM-centered university, not only within the engineering curriculum but also throughout campus life and its physical spaces.

In a paper presented at the 2014 ASEE conference, we discussed how an art museum on the campus of Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) worked with professors in engineering and humanities/communication disciplines to incorporate art into the engineering curriculum. In summer 2019 we conducted IRB-approved research into student engagement with public art surrounding our urban campus. A walking tour of the sculptures was followed by a focus group discussion in which student participants explored how art might intersect with their engineering course work and how art could be integrated on campus to further reinforce connections between engineering and aesthetics.

Our paper for this year’s conference reports on progress made to date, summarizing our summer 2019 research findings together with the results of innovative learning strategies and art-related partnerships and developments across campus. A Qualtrics survey of faculty and academic staff conducted in 2021 rounds out the snapshot of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) at our institution.

The paper concludes with potential future directions for implementing changes in curriculum and bringing art more fully into our campus life. A focus on art as something communally experienced in public places and legitimately connected to engineering coursework serves to highlight its importance as an intrinsic, exciting part of engineering design. Integration of art in engineering education fosters critical and creative thinking, allowing students to conceive alternative approaches in problem-solving and communication of ideas.

Introduction

In what follows, we will offer an overview of the educational model of our university and the questions and concerns we seek to address. We then offer detailed information of three different lines of inquiry we have pursued to gather data on the current culture and mindset guiding pedagogical and career decisions: a 2013-14 longitudinal study which examined four cohorts of honors students, a 2019 focus group study, and a 2021 student/faculty survey. The results present a fairly consistent outlook in spite of the diversity of data-collection methods and the temporal difference: they show the coexistence of two disparate views on the place and importance of the arts and the humanities both within STEM education and society at large. In his 1959 lecture, C.P. Snow famously brought to light this detrimental divide between STEM disciplines and the arts and the humanities. At our STEM-centered university, “the two cultures” take a slight variation: these competing views are coming from faculty, staff, and students working in STEM (with only a few exceptions, as we will explain). The question is how to build a STEAM- oriented curriculum (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) on a campus where there is no strong presence of the arts and the humanities in terms of academic majors and associated liberal arts departments.

The second part of this paper presents examples of successful integration of STEM with the arts and the humanities, i.e., STEAM, at our institution. Exposure to the fine arts has been encouraged to specifically address this problem since at least the 1950s [1]. It is, for instance, at the origin of MIT’s Committee for the Study of the Visual Arts, established in 1972: “As MIT president, [Jerome B.] Wiesner transformed the Institute, recognizing that being the best in science and engineering was not enough–that tomorrow’s leaders also need to integrate the arts and humanities into their thinking about engineering, science, technology and policy” [2]. The initiatives we are presenting here follow a similar focus on the visual arts, but in no way does this mean that we advocate for the visual arts to be the primary area of integration nor the one better suited for initial attempts in the curricula and campus life. Rather, we recognize that funding critically limits this kind of interdisciplinary efforts and that each institution’s options are therefore different. In our case, we are fortunate to be able to work with the university’s own arts museum, which is at the heart of our STEAM project. In other words, there is no prescribed set of activities, content and resources that can guarantee a successful growth of STEAM. What we offer are a set of options that hopefully will inspire other initiatives. Creativity is needed to find paths of integration, as it is pointed out in the report released by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine arguing for the integration of STEM with the arts and the humanities [3].

Lastly, as the social impact of technology and science becomes more pervasive and complex, the need for a more integrated, post-disciplinary approach to their understanding grows in urgency. This paper is ultimately part of a larger conversation about the educational system at the college level and the impact this model has on the conception and application of science and technology in today’s world.

1. Two Cultures: STEM, the Arts and the Humanities at an Engineering School

Our reflections are based on our experiences at a small university that offers bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering, business, user experience, and nursing. Unlike a liberal arts college, students at Milwaukee School of Engineering generally declare their majors upon acceptance. Programs are designed for students to start their specialization almost immediately, with the guarantee that if they do so and stay on track, they will be able to graduate in four years. The advantages of this model are clear, mainly financial (the faster students graduate, the less money they will spend). There are however some unintended consequences of this institutional design that we believe need to be addressed. The following are the most salient traits of the current campus culture:

 Utilitarian approach to learning: “if it doesn’t count towards my major, then it’s a waste of time and money.”

 Specialization without creativity: lack of exploration and curiosity outside their fields.

 Students mainly handled as future workers: intense focus on preparing them for industry jobs. Students are trained within a very limited worldview, networking with the same people in the same kind of companies, etc. Students are persuaded to think about their future careers within the realm of what is already in place.

 STEM education without attention to the arts, humanities, and social sciences: practitioners trained to approach problems with a very narrow focus. As it is well known, a solution will only be as good as the definition of the problem. This framing problem creates technological solutions where a socio-technical approach is needed [4], [5].

 The humanities and the arts are not intellectually respected: electives are treated as less than, which seriously affects efforts in creating a more inclusive, socially conscious and civically engaged campus culture.

 This division also nurtures the false conviction among students (and faculty) that STEM studies are apolitical [5], [6].

 Misjudgment of those whose careers and role in society are based in the arts and the humanities: our students become citizens with a value system that places certain disciplines above others, citizens that are less inclined to respect forms of knowledge they do not understand.

 Art as a privilege: a belief that this is a form of spiritual (or superficial) enjoyment reserved to those with the time and money (and knowledge) to afford it.

The divided culture of our university is not an isolated case, but part of a larger trend echoed at the state and national levels. Funding for the arts and humanities is very much dependent on private initiatives and donors, while teaching institutions organize their budget around the financial—and not necessarily educational—revenues: “Humanities professors are quick to note that their departments play crucial roles in general education for students from a range of majors. But many colleges and universities have been allocating positions and deciding on departmental fates in large part based on numbers of majors” [7]. One of the clearest steps in this direction was the federal government’s attempt to cut down the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities [8]. We faced a similar situation at the local level: on February 3, 2015, then Wisconsin governor Scott Walker delivered a budget proposal that included a redefinition of the state’s educational mission. The attempted changes (eventually removed and explained as a “drafting error”) aimed to remove goals such as “improve the human condition” and “the search for truth”, saying that the mission of the educational system was “to develop human resources to meet the state’s workforce needs” [9]. Once again, the main form of challenge to our STEAM efforts comes in the form of a larger trend that thinks higher education as trade education. As the report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine points out, the tension between a broad, integrated education and a more specialized, vocationally driven approach has “heightened during periods of economic challenge, particularly since the Great Recession that began in 2008” [3, p. ix].

Given these precedents, we strongly believe that the inclusion of the arts and the humanities in students’ education should not be offered as a convenient element in an education success formula that is still thought in terms of workforce productivity, that is “the arts as a vehicle for fostering a utilitarian form of creative thinking and generating interest in STEM fields” [10]. Nor should it be reduced to a few courses as part of the general education requirements. Instead, we advocate for an approach that intentionally integrates all forms of human knowledge, overcoming the disciplinary separation that is presently trending in higher education.

2. Collected Primary Research

In the past seven years we have conducted three IRB-approved research projects aimed at collecting information on integration of art into the engineering curriculum and engineering culture at Milwaukee School of Engineering. In 2013-14 a longitudinal study examined four cohorts of honors students and their experiences studying and creating art in a freshman humanities and communication seminar and then also using the art collection of the Grohmann Museum in a junior-year manufacturing processes course. In 2019 a group of students took part in a walking tour of public sculptures near our campus and then participated in a focus-group discussion of art, especially in connection with their technical coursework and the MSOE campus. Finally, in 2021 students and faculty were surveyed regarding their opinions on art in the curriculum and regarding their awareness of art on campus.

2.1 – Primary Research 1: Longitudinal Study of Honors Students (Note: A description of this 2013-14 study was presented in a paper at the 2014 ASEE conference in Indianapolis. Some text in this section of our current paper also appears in that 2014 paper.) In this case study, a cohort of students engaged with the Grohmann Museum’s collection during the freshman and junior years. Surveys were administered to collect feedback from these students about their experiences with art in a freshman-level humanities seminar and a junior-level manufacturing processes course. Both courses were honors courses, and their art components were to serve as pilots for possible future replication among the general student population. (And, in fact, two of the first-year communication courses taken by all freshmen now incorporate the art component of the honors seminar, minus the creation and exhibition of original student artwork. The junior-level course was not replicated, because the honors program shifted emphasis away from major-specific honors courses to honors-specific humanities and social studies courses.)

In the freshman honors seminar, engineering students explored the concept of “City” as a social construct. Students studied cultural understandings of what “City” means by “reading” its portrayal in different kinds of “texts” (music, art, literature, history, myths, film, “urban legends,” assumptions/stereotypes) as well as from a variety of perspectives (historical, literary, philosophical, and aesthetic, for example).

Art was an important component of this seminar. First came a basic grounding in art principles. Students learned art terminology and practiced their new vocabulary by discussing slides of city- themed artwork in class. Second, following this introduction, students spent several class periods in the Museum analyzing the collection’s sculpture and paintings. The third and final art-related portion of the course required each student to produce an original work of art that was displayed in a public exhibit at the Museum. The exhibit’s theme was “The City” (the topic of the seminar). It opened with an end-of-term reception organized by students in the class and ran for three weeks.

At the time of our longitudinal study, the freshman honors seminar had run four years. We surveyed all students who had taken that course and got a response rate of 69%. Student reflections on their experiences with the art component of this freshman-level course were favorable.

Every single student recalled creating a work of art for display in the Museum; 88.6% said they “strongly” remembered and 11.4% “somewhat” remembered. In addition, a strong majority (77%) of students agreed that the experience of creating their artwork was largely positive. Over half of the students said they felt “happy” and “proud” of their artwork, while 20% went so far as to say they felt “excited.”

Two (6%) of the 35 students who responded to the survey did not enjoy the art experience. One of these two students sounded frustrated in his comments about the slippery definition of “quality” in art:

Art always has potential, but it can't be taken seriously or people will be unfairly penalized, and it will never be worth anything if taken lightly. Anybody can write a sentance [sic] about how their shoelace position is 'artistic' and who is the teacher to object? It has to be acknowledged as a small, side, relaxing project.

Both students were dissatisfied with their artwork. Neither felt they had received adequate instruction and background to produce a piece of art in which to take pride. They both expressed an all-or-nothing view of the course’s art component—either that it should not have been included as part of the humanities seminar at all or it should have been made a central focus of the course. Yet one of these students did say that the art component had enhanced his aesthetic judgment and his ability to learn independently. Working on the art project, this student said, “definitely forced me to realize how inadequate my instruction and practice in visual arts had been, and spurred me to study the subject further on my own. I have achieved a much better understanding as a result of my independent exploration.”

A majority (54%) of students felt their technical knowledge enhanced their ability to appreciate, interpret and create art. Likewise, 54% of students said that exposure to the Museum’s collection gave them a different view of technology. Interestingly, their comments revealed that the art helped broaden and contextualize their understanding of the history of technology:

 “In particular, viewing the artwork describing the progression of medical technology gave me a much deeper appreciation for how far we've come in such a little amount of time.”

 “It allowed a good look at past technologies and safety precautions.”

 “I actually was curious how people managed to produce such quality products with the older tools and social structures. The art doesn't say MUCH about it but gives an impression of work environments of earlier times.”

A question aimed at teasing out whether the art component helped to achieve ABET Criterion 3 (a-k) outcomes in effect at the time of our study revealed only moderate success. Although 40% of students agreed that the art component of the freshman honors seminar “increased my understanding of the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and/or societal context,” another 40% said they were merely “neutral” regarding this claim. No one “strongly agreed” with the statement—and 20% either “disagreed” or “strongly disagreed” that the art had helped them see engineering impacts in a global or societal context. Overall, 82% of students agreed or strongly agreed that the art component should continue to be included in the freshman-level humanities seminar.

In the junior-level mechanical engineering honors course, students revisited the Museum’s art collection once again. This course was the main course in the mechanical engineering curriculum where students were introduced to manufacturing processes; it typically covered casting, deformation (bulk and sheet metal), powder processes, machining, joining, an overview of plastic and composite processes and an introduction to Statistical Process Control (SPC). The class had a lab component with a project in which the students designed, modeled, simulated, and ultimately produced a cast part. Other lab activities included an SPC activity, machining, design of experiments and surface roughness. There was at least one open week.

The class provided an overview of many processes, with a focus on process description and characteristics, terminology, and design aspects. The coverage of many processes had the drawback of limited depth in those processes. Most instructors had an assignment or project that allowed the students to explore a particular process or aspect of a process in-depth. In the honors section of this course the instructor used the art collection as a starting point to provide an opportunity for the students to explore the relationship between engineering solutions and society in addition to gaining in-depth knowledge on an aspect of manufacturing.

The specific assignment given to the students was to select a piece of artwork from the collection as the starting point for an in-depth study of an aspect of manufacturing processes or practices that related to the artwork. The students were given a week to select a piece of artwork and submit a paper topic. The instructor was flexible in how closely tied the paper topic was to the artwork. In some cases, the paper topic was the process depicted in the art; in other cases, it was a product illustrated in the art, or the environmental or safety practices shown in the art. Students were encouraged to describe the piece of art they chose, but the primary focus was on an aspect of manufacturing processes. A lab period was used to take the students to the museum, where the museum director gave a guided tour of the collection, including what is available on-line and in books. The deliverables from the assignment included a paper due at the end of the term along with a presentation to the class given during class in the last week of the term. A small portion of the final exam (12%) covered material from the presentations.

A majority (60%) of the students felt exposure to the art collection gave them a different view of technology and 87% of the students felt the assignment increased their understanding of the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental and/or societal context. Even students who were “neutral” on whether exposure to the art collection had given them a different view of technology still felt the assignment increased their understanding of the impact of engineering solutions.

The students felt (87%) exploring the art collection increased their interest in manufacturing processes, and all the students felt their technical knowledge enhanced their ability to appreciate and interpret the art. Interestingly, while just 67% of the students said they enjoyed learning about the art and using artwork as a starting point for the manufacturing process paper, 93% of the students recommended the assignment be used in the future.

Most of the student comments were positive, as well, with the suggestion to have the introduction to the paper and the tour later in the term than the first week, indicating a desire to have more knowledge of the manufacturing processes before making a topic selection. The main positive comments were about the flexibility of choosing a topic and the opportunity to learn about an aspect of manufacturing in more depth. A few students noted this could be done without the tie to the artwork and were neutral on learning more about the artwork and using the collection as a starting point. The initial tour by the museum director was considered a plus, along with students’ own presentations to the class.

The instructor noted that two specific groups of students really liked the connection to art and were very excited to have the opportunity to enhance their knowledge and to see the connection between some of the processes used in art with manufacturing processes. The specific topics of interest were glassblowing/manufacturing and patternmaking/casting. Overall, the Museum’s art collection provided a wonderful opportunity to make the connection between an engineering class and the humanities and help the students explore the impact of engineering in a global, economic, environmental and societal context.

2.2 – Primary Research 2: Public Art and Focus Group In August of 2019, two researchers met with a group of six undergraduate students, representing various engineering majors, for a walking tour of Milwaukee’s Riverwalk art, then continued with a tour of public sculptures along one of the main thoroughfares of the city’s downtown area. The Riverwalk art is permanent public art, maintained and curated by the city; the other is seasonal, appearing only for the summer months. Student participants in this IRB-approved project had volunteered their time in response to a recruiting email seeking students who were interested in viewing and discussing the public art. After the walking tour, the group met on campus to eat lunch and participate in a focus group about art on campus. The art pieces that had been viewed that morning were used to structure the discussion.

When determining the goals and success of the discussion about art on campus, the researchers identified two strands of responses from the students: curricular and cultural. In terms of the curricular role of art, students readily identified courses they had taken where concepts and applications used in the creation of art also had engineering or other technological uses.

2.2.1 – Curricular Connections For example, a student in industrial engineering immediately commented on the use of symmetry in a piece of artwork, A Phoenix, which used repurposed metal pieces from discarded machines, and stated that one of the tenets of industrial engineering is the application of symmetry. For that student, the art inhabited the concept. A spherical artwork, SS Core, prodded a software engineering student to comment on its connection to algorithms, as well as graphs and trees, that had been explored in one of his classes. One of the seasonal pieces of art not only used wood as one of its materials, but in the signage described the process by which it had been treated to become malleable. A civil engineering student confirmed the use of timber in constructing buildings, and she described in significant detail the processing of wood in construction. She went on to discuss the environmental factors that had been part of a class discussion about using natural resources, both in construction and in their impact on the cities where the buildings would stand.

The focus group left no doubt that art has curricular connections to both concepts and applications taught in the engineering and technology-based classrooms. But where students could readily connect the art to aspects of courses they had taken, they were far more eager to discuss the cultural importance of art on campus, both to improve the student experience and to express an identity for the school overall.

2.2.2 – Cultural Connections Students were immediate and direct in their criticisms of the MSOE campus for being a dreary place with no dynamic or colorful symbols or icons to represent the school. Our campus buildings are almost entirely repurposed from their original uses, and as such, are utilitarian in both structure and design. The art museum has some artistic features that are of note, especially the statues on the roof and the stained glass in the uppermost floor. But as important as the museum is, the art there is a thematic collection which is primarily made up of European oil paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection reflects the processes of work, capturing the shift from manual to technological in the western world. Several instructors have made a connection between the art and areas of study (see the examples above and the “laboratory” uses that follow) but it does not reflect the student, or campus experience, and this was the focus of the discussion in August of 2019.

Students immediately articulated a wish for art that would identify the campus as a place where “we’re proud to be engineers.” A discussion of a possible mural (on the aforementioned utilitarian buildings) led into a lively description of a mural that could be programmed with LED lights. Although several designs were mentioned, the group seemed to delight in a type of circuit board, or a design representing a circuit board, to capture the technological identity of the school. They discussed possible ways to program the mural design, as well as access to it. The students articulated that designing something for the city to see would also be a form of recruitment for the school.

More interactive ideas appeared as students considered both representative and abstract statuary art. Milwaukee’s Riverwalk is home to The Bronze Fonz, the character of Fonzie from the television show Happy Days, set in Milwaukee. Not far from the Fonz is a very different type of statue, Common Comrades, which embodies collective suffering. Both pieces led the focus group to discuss representative art, and students were quick to state that they had no wish for any “Great Men” of science to have an artistic place on campus. The three female students were adamant that there were enough male faces in their daily lives, and there was no need to reinforce the dominance of men at the school or in the field of engineering.

Students instead described art that would directly reflect the student experience. They lightly suggested The Programmer, a statue of a seated student on a laptop who was intensely working. They imagined students and visitors sitting with the programmer and taking pictures. On a more serious note, they discussed the distress and despair of the Common Comrades statue and connected it to the demanding student experience that makes up their daily lives. The structure and workload here are heavy and often perceived as harsh. Students spoke about art that would confirm this. They articulated a wish for art that would acknowledge how hard they work and offer them some relief. They debated over some of the more whimsical pieces of art, like the colorful Dancing Through Life which features a ballerina and a cow. Some students found it relaxing, “goofy” and “fun;” while others were dismissive of it. But there was agreement that there is a place for art that relaxes students and reduces their stress.

2.3 – Primary Research 3: Survey on Integration of Art on Campus A Qualtrics survey of MSOE students and faculty conducted in February 2021 rounds out the snapshot of STEAM at our institution. Our Grohmann Museum opened in 2007. The honors program began in 2010, with the first student art exhibition held in the Museum that fall. Museum artworks have been incorporated into various engineering, nursing, and business courses. In 2015 all freshman humanities and communication courses began incorporating the art elements that the freshman honors seminar piloted in 2010 (although students in the freshman courses today only analyze and write about art but do not create and exhibit original artwork, as the honors students did). After all this progress in integrating art into our curriculum and campus culture over the past 13 years, we were interested in assessing the general level of interest in and awareness of art on campus today.

As possible initial evidence of students’ passion for the inclusion of art in their technical education, it is interesting to note the speed with which they responded to the Qualtrics survey. Within the first ten minutes, there were 81 responses. The next 20 minutes brought in another 48 responses, for a total of 129 responses in the first half hour. By the end of the first day, eight hours later, we had received 236 responses, which accounted for more than 50% of the 430 total responses received over the next two weeks that the survey was open.

Approximately 63% of students expressed interest in learning more about art, while 19% (14% “somewhat” and 4% “strongly”) denied such interest. About 69% of students said they were interested in seeing more art-related electives, while 31% said they were not. Fewer students, about 54%, said they were interested in having art incorporated into their courses, while 26% were not, and 20% neither agreed nor disagreed. However, students were far less interested in having art integrated into their academic program majors. Only 15% said they were very interested, another 40% said they might be somewhat interested, and 45% said they were not interested.

So while a strong majority (69%) of students viewed more art electives as a positive, fewer (54%) were enthusiastic about having art incorporated into their courses, and only a very small number (15%) liked the idea of integrating art into their degree programs. In fact, having art integrated into their academic majors was seen as a negative by nearly half (45%) the students.

Comments from students in favor of having more art-related electives seemed to fall into the following categories:

 Would provide opportunities to be creative

 Would provide opportunities for self-expression

 Would complement engineering coursework and provide new insights

 Would provide opportunities for self-fulfillment

 Would be fun, relaxing, and good for countering stress and promoting mental health

 Would help students understand and appreciate art more

Comments from students who were not interested in having more art-related electives seemed to fall into the following categories:

 Would be a waste of time and no longer enjoyable to study art if it was “forced” in a course

 Would be too “disjointed” from engineering courses, would be a distraction

 Would rather take technical courses

 Not interested in art

 No extra time for art in the curriculum, with barely enough time to fit in the technical material

 Not clear how art can help with an engineering career

 Resources should be directed toward engineering/science/math facilities and courses

 Art is fine for a spare-time hobby, but students go to college to become “workplace ready”  Art electives are “worthless” and would dilute the “prestigious” engineering curriculum

 Am not paying expensive tuition at this school for “fluff” classes

 Would not want to be graded on art

Student responses here are illustrative of the divide in engineering culture mentioned earlier in this paper. For some, art is valued and respected not only for its intrinsic worth but also for the depth of perspective and insight it brings to engineering problems. For others, art is viewed at best as a nice add-on if you can afford it but a burdensome expense if not and at worst as “worthless fluff,” i.e., a distracting waste of time that is not as prestigious as math, science, and other technical complements to an engineering degree.

Ironically, 89% of all student respondents agreed (56% “strongly,” 33% “agreed”) that they “enjoy art.” Only 5% disagreed (4.64% “somewhat” and .7% “strongly”). So the divide regarding art electives in our survey results may be an issue of engineering culture more than individuals’ feelings about art. Negative reactions to the prospect of more art-related electives were in many ways a response to the intrusion of art into a rigorous, “prestigious,” curriculum where it didn’t belong and would steal resources of time and money away from the technical focus.

When asked to describe when or how they had used art in their coursework, many students mentioned papers and presentations prepared for their freshman humanities/communications courses. These courses have an art component, in which students learn art concepts, tour the Museum, and write papers on specific artworks. However, several students also described using art in their engineering courses, including drafting and diagrams, visualizing shapes and situations in calculus and physics, and incorporating art-related outcomes in robotics and computer science courses. Interestingly, some students also described using art-related strategies of their own devising to help them understand course material. One student described their elaborate, color-coded notetaking system. Another described their habit of sketching out a system to get a sense of how the various parts break down.

Faculty responses to a survey conducted at the same time as the student survey mirrored the “engineering culture” divide seen in the student responses. Just under half (46%) of faculty agreed that they would “like to incorporate art in some way” into their courses, while 31% neither agreed nor disagreed, and 23% disagreed. Just over half (55%) agreed that they felt comfortable incorporating art in the classes, while 17% neither agreed nor disagreed, and 28% disagreed. While several faculty members said they had integrated art into their courses taught, a significant number said they had not and would not, primarily because art is not “core” to their disciplines and there is not enough time for art to be integrated into courses without taking away from essential technical material. However, the top faculty responses to a question that asked what is holding them back from incorporating art into their courses, had to do with knowledge about how art connects with their subject material (22%), evidence that art is appropriate for teaching their subjects, knowledge about how to teach art (16%), and knowledge about art itself (13%). Faculty openness to learning more about how to incorporate art into their courses largely reflected their initial interest in somehow incorporating art, with 25% being very interested in learning more, 48% being somewhat interested, and 27% being not at all interested.

2.4 – Insights from the Primary Research Projects Our three IRB-approved research projects studying integration of art into an engineering curriculum have yielded several conclusions. First, engineering students have more interest in art than stereotypical assumptions might imply. Second, inclusion of art in an engineering curriculum, whether in technical courses or in general education electives, has the potential to help students create meaningful connections between art and the STEM-related topics associated with their major areas of study. Third, many engineering students (and faculty) have an all-or- nothing approach to incorporating art in the curriculum (e.g., as the frustrated student in the first survey put it, “[Art] can't be taken seriously or people will be unfairly penalized, and it will never be worth anything if taken lightly.”) Fourth, direct interaction with artworks (including creation of art) appears to increase the value students assign to art, even if that interaction is not identified as “enjoyable.”

The curricular strand of the 2019 focus group has a definite connection to the 2021 survey which inquired about the use of art in classes and the potential for art-focused courses in the future. But there is also a cultural connection between the focus group and the survey responses. Of course, the focus group attracted students who had a wish to explore the use of art on campus. These students arrived with the belief that art is important to student life. In addition to the application of art to engineering principles, they also described the power of story and symbolism in art, revealing their own wish to make art part of their lives as students at a STEM school.

Survey responses that reflected similar wishes indicate that the small pool of students who attended the focus group are part of a larger mindset, those students that wish for more art on campus and as part of their studies.

But the responses of students who did not wish for art in their studies also revealed an attitude towards art as well as the arts in general that is not new to those of us who teach at STEM colleges and universities. The culture here, supported by comments of students, and even those of our colleagues, indicates a lack of value in regard to art. The most common response from students who did not wish for more art to be offered was a wish for more practical classes and electives, those that would support their majors most directly.

There was certainly a range of responses, and many students expressed liking art, but only as a part of their personal lives. They do not want to pay for classes that are not directly related to their major, and many were clear that they did not want to be graded on any class or project within a class that would require them to create or analyze art in any way.

No one who teaches at STEM schools should be shocked by this attitude. Most programs attract students whose minds are highly analytical and value concrete, objective information from which concrete products and solutions can be delivered.

But the idea that art and artistic endeavors should be relegated to hobby status or deemed less valuable than the practical demands of specific majors is troubling. Many instructors have often observed a superiority, even to the point of arrogance, on the part of students, who dismiss anyone who pursues a career outside of STEM as “lesser” overall than the professions to which they commit. This is where the focus of the school on STEM-based majors is both a blessing and a curse. The specialty provides focus and specific attention to the technology that is the foundation of their studies, but there is no experience, no empathy, no value for those who study non-STEM disciplines.

Art on campus would help change this cultural attitude and help students see beyond their technological horizons. Our campus art museum has been playing this role for over a decade.

3. Building STEAM: A Campus Art Museum as Laboratory

Since its opening on campus in 2007, the Grohmann Museum has employed its collections and exhibitions in many ways—developing programming to support a variety of engineering, business, and nursing curricula. With a very specific collection and exhibition program focused exclusively on the art of engineering, labor, and human achievement, the museum is absolutely unique in that it deals with a singular theme—work.

The museum was founded on the principle that as an extension of the University it is a laboratory for learning and informal education serving both campus and community. When at first it seemed peculiar to establish a museum of art on an engineering campus, employing the art collection across curricula has created a climate whereby we are able to fulfill the museum’s mission in concert with our mantra, Scientia sine arte nihil est (science without art is nothing).

Museum Mission: The mission of the museum is to collect, preserve, interpret and display the art of industry, engineering, and the history of technology. This mission is executed through exhibitions, programs, workshops, and activities that enhance the educational experience at the university while making available to the city, the region, and beyond a major cultural resource for the benefit of the individual and collective lives of its constituency.

The museum’s vision is to focus on our uniqueness and continue to expand our audience while further establishing our role as the only museum focused exclusively on the art of human industry with the largest collection of its type, which includes archives and scholarly resources. Our vision includes acting as a model of professionalism for other institutions and striving for excellence in exhibitions and public programming, all while reinforcing the mission of the university in alignment with the university’s strategic plan.

When conceiving of the plan to establish an art museum in the center of a technical campus. the museum’s founder and the university’s president felt strongly about the impact art could make on the student body and how it might supplement their very technical education. The thought was to encourage a friendly confrontation with art placed not just in the museum, but also in a number of campus buildings and public spaces. In fact, the museum’s collection was gifted to the university prior to the establishment of the museum, providing many opportunities to share it with the campus community prior to the museum’s opening.

An educational experience that included art was a priority when establishing the museum, in that the building was equipped with sixteen faculty offices, three classrooms, and a presentation space, creating not just a museum, but a center for teaching and learning. Perhaps most significantly, since its creation, the museum has served as the home of the Humanities, Social Science, and Communications (HSC) department. As such, many HSC courses include a museum collection component whereby students select an artwork or group of artworks and draft research papers on the works through both historical and engineering lenses. And, in some cases, they create personal “response pieces” to the artworks they have analyzed.

As the museum collection has permeated the HSC curriculum, it has also been deployed to support a number of academic departments and technical pursuits. Working closely with the museum curator and director, a number of new programs and research projects utilize the museum collection in a number of novel and innovative ways. Examples of this utilization include:

 Ergonomic studies in physics—utilizing the museum’s many depictions of people in their working environment. Assessing historical representations of the relationship between human and machine have led to students working to improve these environments.

 Faculty in the Construction Management program have come to use the collection, and its presentation of past workways, in units involving OSHA studies of workplace safety. Here, students assess the historic representations of working scenes, factory interiors and manual labor through a contemporary lens of occupational health and safety.

 The Mechanical Engineering program has also found ways to utilize the museum’s exhibitions and collections in their study of the evolution of machine tools and their development. Here the focus is on tools in use over time and advancements made as new technology became available.

 The museum holds what is perhaps the country’s largest collection of 17th century Dutch medical paintings, depicting medical diagnostics and treatments in place 300-400 years ago. This collection is widely utilized by our Nursing faculty in their observation studies with first-year nursing students in their foundational coursework.

 Graduate-level Business seminars have met semi-annually in the museum and each seminar includes a component on inquiry which utilizes a painting or paintings from the museum collection. This project is at once an exercise in inquiry—asking the right questions in a transactional setting—and notetaking.

 Both the Civil and Architectural Engineering programs have employed museum exhibitions in their coursework. One example can be drawn from a photo exhibition of over 50 bridges spanning North America. Following their tour, Civil Engineering students selected one of the bridges on view and performed a full analysis of the bridge type, architecture, building methods, and material usage for their senior research papers.

Apart from the use of the museum collection as subject matter, a number of student exhibitions have also been created with the previously mentioned MSOE Honors program and the Photography, Art, and Design Clubs. Additionally, the Art and Design club has also created the new stART Lab—a creative maker space in the museum’s lower level. The stART Lab is outfitted with a design computer and printer for digital photography and design activities, a full stock of ‘analog’ supplies and materials for mixed media creation (painting drawing, 3-D), as well as drafting tables, storage racks, and preparation supplies for matting and framing.

These are but a handful of examples of the integration of art and engineering with significant impact on our students, faculty, and the campus community. For yet another way the museum staff is striving to make art a central component of the campus experience, we can look to the many construction projects both in-process or in the planning phases and how art can play a role.

Another element at the intersection of art and engineering, and elemental to campus planning, is the consideration of a percent for art, whereby one percent of the total construction cost will be made available to outfit new developments and spaces with public, site-specific art installations. Currently there are no percent for art programs in place, municipally or institutionally. However, proposals are being drafted to include a percent for art in all future projects. Coupled with museum programs, educational activities, campus surveys, and student-driven arts initiatives, a percent for art seems a natural extension to further create a culture of art in an engineering education.

4. Building STEAM: Where We Are Going

For almost 15 years, as stated in our paper’s opening sentence, our campus has been engaged in an ongoing effort to create a culture of art at a STEM-centered university, not only within the engineering curriculum but also throughout campus life and its physical spaces. By “a culture of art” we mean one in which “art” is understood as broadly inclusive and integrated so thoroughly into the fabric of the institution that, ideally, it permeates the curriculum, extracurricular activity, and physical spaces of the campus alike.

In addition to the museum and the many connections it has made with faculty in terms of curriculum and varied opportunities for scholarship, other initiatives have also occurred. For example, although performance opportunities in music and theater were available for years through student clubs, the music experience has been formalized and extended within the past two years, with the hiring of a full-time person to direct student musical ensembles and to teach a class offering humanities course credit for their performance-based participation.

Additionally, faculty members have received grant funding from outside sources for curriculum development and projects that incorporated “creativity” and “innovation.” These helped usher in our annual “Festival of Big Ideas” competition which is like a talent show but with an intellectual twist; the Festival of Big ideas invites students to present any topic that promotes intellectual curiosity or provides meaningful entertainment. Entries in the first competition included a short film, a comedy routine, musical presentations, and formal presentations. Students have made it clear that their interests in art go beyond the visual, although visual art remains an important path for our cultural connections.

We are not claiming or concluding that a single piece of art will bridge the cultural divide between students who embrace art and those who dismiss it. But by looking for commonality between the two sides, we have recognized that interactive art, something that can be controlled or used by the public, will likely appeal to all. Our small group of students generated ideas in 2019 about an interactive mural, or a statue that would allow for photo opportunities with students and visitors. A larger discussion among the student population might allow for a combination of practical applications with an aesthetically visual appeal. With a nod to the importance of practical use, artwork that identifies the efforts and life of students, and celebrates them, might be the first step. This potential art could connect the two sides, and allow each to find value in art.

5. Conclusion

In two years, Milwaukee School of Engineering will be celebrating its 120th anniversary. It will be same year that we switch from 10-week trimesters to the traditional semester system. This momentous structural change is also allowing us to make many other changes in our overall mission and objectives for our students. The writers of this paper hope wholeheartedly that one of the changes that we see is an increased value placed on art, in our classrooms, in our departments, in student life, and in the very buildings and grounds that make up our campus. We are working towards facilitating the creation of a work of art to celebrate our anniversary and to launch our new goals and values.

The integration of arts and the humanities in engineering education fosters critical and creative thinking, allowing students to conceive alternative approaches in problem-solving and communication of ideas. More importantly, a broad and integrated education acknowledges the complexity of our societies and the inability of higher education institutions to predict future career and challenges. Instead, we prepare students to embrace our uncertain futures with minds and spirits ready for the unexpected, and with the interests of the larger community at heart. A focus on art as something communally experienced in public places and legitimately connected to engineering coursework serves to highlight its importance as an intrinsic, exciting part of engineering design.

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APPENDIX – Photos of Milwaukee Riverwalk sculptures referred to in Section 2.2

A Phoenix (front view)

A Phoenix (other side)

SS Core

The Bronze Fonz

Common Comrades

Dancing Through Life