Resumen de Increasing the perspectives of engineering undergraduates on societal issues through an interdisciplinary program

Adrian Holzer, Isabelle Vonèche Cardia, Samuel Bendahan, Alexis Berne, Luca Bragazza, Antonin Danalet, Ambrogio Fasoli, Jérôme N. Feige, Denis Gillet, Siara Isaac, Ingrid Le Duc, Delphine Preissmann, Roland Tormey

• To tackle the challenges of the 21st century, future scientists and engineers have to understand the interplay betweensocietal challenges and technical solutions as early as possible in their education. They also have to develop thecommunication and the teamwork skills required to be effective professionals. To address this issue, the EcolePolytechnique Fe ́de ́rale de Lausanne (EPFL) introduced a new Global Issues program to all 1800 first year engineeringstudents. In this paper, we present this novel program and reflect on our experience. Our results suggest that student whoshowed positive attitude towards teamwork, benefited the most from the course and increase their perspectives on societalissues as measured by their moral reasoning after the course.