The Office of Regional and International Community Engagement (UBC ORICE) recently caught up with Dr. Pranav Chintalapati, Assistant Professor of Teaching in the UBC Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. In a previous interview, Dr. Chintalapati talked about the value of his community-based experiential learning journey in one of ORICE’s international courses, APSC 461 Global Engineering Leadership. In this Q&A feature, Dr. Chintalapati details how he continues to draw from his undergraduate experience with ORICE and integrate systems-thinking principles into engineering education at UBC with his lab course, CHBE 264.
CHBE 264 is a second-year chemical and biological engineering lab-based course taught by Dr. Chintalapati and includes a mentorship program with Dr. Naoko Ellis’ fourth-year students in CHBE 473. Dr. Chintalapati and ORICE collaborated on a poster assignment that included systems thinking to analyze cases of industrial pollution exposure, identify stakeholders, and propose preventive measures. Read on to learn more about Dr. Chintalapati’s reflections.
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Q: Why were you interested in collaborating with ORICE? How did that collaboration develop with the poster assignment for CHBE 264?
When I came back to UBC as a faculty member, I connected with ORICE to explore how we could incorporate the work that ORICE does into my engineering classes. For context–a lot of my PhD work had been at the interface of the principles that ORICE and engineering operate on such as systems thinking and systems dynamics modelling, so it only felt natural to see how we could integrate ORICE more with chemical and biological engineering. I realized that it would be possible to connect this work to one of the second-year courses here –CHBE 264.
“I wanted to ensure that this wasn't just a 'check-box' assignment. I wanted students to understand that EDI was an important part of being a chemical engineer, not just something external and disingenuous.”
In the first year of CHBE 264, students were asked to design a scientific poster by researching an industrial application of one of their lab experiments. During last summer, there was a request to incorporate more Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) content into the course curriculum. I realized that the poster assignment could be an effective way to incorporate EDI. However, I wanted to ensure that this wasn’t just a ‘check-box’ assignment. I wanted students to understand that EDI was an important part of being a chemical engineer, not just something external and disingenuous. Thinking about EDI through the lens of chemical process safety, I discussed with ORICE how I could more effectively weave elements of EDI into the assignment. ORICE’s Advisor, Gaylean Davies, introduced a report on sacrifice zones, authored by UBC’s Dr. David Boyd, which focused on industrial pollution and pollution from manufacturing practices–resulting in disproportional pollution exposure to marginalized communities. The report was a compilation of 50 case studies and it felt appropriate to use those as the basis for the poster assignment.
Accordingly, in the assignment, students work in groups to review one of these cases and conduct a root-cause analysis using systems thinking. The objective is to identify the underlying root causes of each case and arrive at an understanding of the systemic factors and decisions that lead to pollution exposure in the first place. Rather than saying up front ‘This is an EDI assignment,’ we use systems thinking as the method for students to recognize for themselves the issues of injustice and environmental racism, and we hope that arriving at that realization through their own analysis will allow the message to resonate deeper.
Q: What is the value of bringing interdisciplinary perspectives such as ORICE to Engineering education?
For the past 2 years, ORICE’s Director, Tamara Baldwin, has given a guest lecture for this portion of the course. It is more of a facilitation and a discussion–her slides are questions that prompt engineering students to think about the underlying root causes and think beyond the technical solutions about contextual factors that affect how the solution could be implemented.
“I have learned that having Tamara come in helps shift the tone in the classroom, and gets students to think in a different way than they normally do when they do technical work with me. This is extremely helpful.”
It is nice having someone external in the class– someone with a background in Sociology and an expert in this area with years of experience working on engagement-based activities and thinking from a global perspective–to talk about something different. I have learned that having Tamara come in helps shift the tone in the classroom, and gets students to think in a different way than they normally do when they do technical work with me. This is extremely helpful.
It’s my goal to figure out how I can embed more content like this in my courses. My hope while embedding systems-thinking content in this second-year lab course is that by grounding it in chemical engineering processes, students can imagine what it would be like working as chemical engineers in a decision-making role, and systems-thinking should feel like a natural extension of that. Lastly, I believe that the Chemical and Biological Engineering department is interested in bringing in a global perspective and encouraging our students to think in systems and consider those outside factors that affect how engineering solutions are implemented.
Q: Is there anything you would like to tell other Faculty members in the various UBC Faculties about the importance of experiential learning for students?
“I find that bringing in the expertise of ORICE, especially into a STEM course, is an exceptional opportunity to expand how students think about technical problems and ultimately make them better at designing solutions.”
As the world gets increasingly complex, with interconnected crises that have multitudes of effects, it is important for graduates of all disciplines, going into the world, to navigate these complexities. How they do that may vary from one discipline to another. From an engineering perspective, this affects how an engineering solution can be implemented within a context, and systems thinking is an approach to understanding the potential effects of implementation. I find that bringing in the expertise of ORICE, especially into a STEM course, is an exceptional opportunity to expand how students think about technical problems and ultimately make them better at designing solutions.
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