Attitudes toward service learning in engineering: A comparative analysis between faculty and students

Now entering its second year, the Humanitarian Engineering Program, which is sponsored by the Hewlett Foundation, at the Colorado School of Mines, is creating curriculum that will support engineering students in developing an understanding of their responsibility for solving humanitarian problems that exist throughout the world. As part of this effort, baseline data has been collected on both the faculty and student attitudes towards service activities using the "Community Service Attitudes Scale" which was developed and validated by Shiarella, McCarthy, and Tucker¹. This paper uses this instrument to examine and compare the phase of development that faculty and students at the Colorado School of Mines have obtained with respect to service activities prior to the proposed intervention. During the fall of 2004, 78 students and 34 faculty responded to this assessment instrument. The results of this study suggest that the participating faculty were at a higher level of development with respect to service activities than were students.