Distinctively Christian Engineering: Implementing Guiding Principles in our Civil Curriculum

At Dordt College, we work to make our motto, Soli Deo Gloria (glory to God alone), the organizing principle for all activities. In the Engineering Department, it is our responsibility to continue to shape our program to be holistic and Christ-centered in order to equip our students to serve the Lord obediently in engineering. To direct the development and modification of our engineering curriculum, we established a set of five distinctively Christian guiding principles for engineering. Setting the direction for this work required a grounding point. Therefore, in a subsequent manuscript we evaluated the extent to which these principles were already emphasized in our civil engineering curriculum. This evaluation found opportunities for curriculum improvements, the most pressing of which was developing our students’ understanding that that the world and everything in it was created for God’s glory. In this paper, we report on and critique our implementation of course activities that addressed the identified opportunities for curriculum improvement. This implementation included a common survey and targeted course activities. The survey provided an assessment of whether the guiding principles resonated with students at various points in their education. The activities were both linked to specific principles and course objectives and built upon activities in prior courses. Our critique of these early implementation steps provided evidence that the course activities helped our students understand and appreciate the guiding principles. However, further work needs to be done to translate this knowledge into a lifestyle where the principles guide all of our students’ engineering work.