This article was originally published in the Spring 2024 issue of the GFS Bulletin.

Peering out the window of his second-story lab in Germantown Friends School’s Wade Science Center, Bob Wein spies a curiosity. On the second floor of the Alumni Building about 20 feet away is an odd doorway to nowhere on the facing wall, some vestige of a bygone era. If a person were to open the door from inside the Alumni Building and walk through it now, they’d tumble 10 feet to the ground below.

Wein, who teaches “Principles of Engineering” in the Upper School, turns to his students and points across the alleyway.

“That building isn’t handicap-accessible. This one is,” Wein said. “We need to talk about what that means.”

Then comes the assignment. Wein tasks his students with building a model bridge from Wade to the unused doorway, connecting the buildings and opening up access to the Alumni Building for those in wheelchairs or other mobility devices. Students will need to think about the slope, the texture of the floor, and other minor details to ensure the bridge’s utility, he tells them.

 

But then Wein presses his students to think even more deeply.

"What does this do to traffic out on the street? What happens when it's not just a person on crutches or in a wheelchair, but it's now available to everybody else?” he asked. “How do we open up that space in an equitable way?”

 

It’s this second set of questions that reveal the essential ingredient of “Principles of Engineering,” a course now wrapping up its fourth school year in existence. 

Prior to his arrival at GFS in 2019, Wein, a physicist by training, worked as both a scientist in private industry and as a college professor. After landing at GFS, he proposed an engineering course. The school was able to secure donor funding to build a state-of-the-art lab, replete with 3D printers, a high-precision laser cutter and other high-end equipment.

But more important to Wein than the physical elements of the lab was its soul. Over the course of his career, Wein has seen engineers oftentimes causing more harm than good. With the planet now in a more precarious state than any other time in human history, what Wein thinks engineering needs most is a recalibration of its moral compass.

“We need our engineers to be ethically trained,” he said. “They need to know when to say, 'No.’ As I tell my students over and over and over again, we don’t need any more bad engineering.”

Building Community

Eva Porter, Science Department chair at GFS, sees “Principles of Engineering” as a model. In addition to the bridge project, students are tasked with building autonomous vehicles, concrete arches and model-scale windmills, and along with technical challenges, each assignment asks students to confront real ethical and social challenges, especially those that affect communities in Philadelphia.

“I think the program is a good model for all of our science classes to follow. It’s problem-based, project-based and there’s a focus on community and place,” Porter said. 

The sense of empathy emphasized in the course has also become contagious. Senior Audrey Ling has ambitions to study architecture in college. This year, she elected to take both “Principles of Engineering” and “Senior Studio,” an advanced art course in the Upper School that challenges students to develop a project showing mastery of both technical skills and aesthetics.

 

She realized how she could approach both courses with the same project and incorporate a sense of ethical purpose. Over the course of the year, she has designed and constructed a model of a working-scale homeless shelter. She needed to address the humanity of a person in crisis, explained Wein. 

Made from materials recycled from last year’s Art Show, Ling’s “pod” is now about the size of a large refrigerator turned on its side. Once fully built it will offer protection from the elements, an elevated sleeping platform, storage areas, a security lock and internal lighting. Ling also designed the pod with aesthetics in mind, incorporating a sweeping, modernist curve on one side. Wein also advises students to envision the placement of their creation so that the neighborhood will accept it. 

“If you give something an aesthetic appeal, people will be less likely to vandalize it, and it will have more value,” said Ling, who hopes to find a real-world use for her pod design. “No one wants to live in a box.”

Back in the Lab

Real-world implications are also top of mind for Wein’s current engineering students.

With ever-increasing demand for energy and the need to transition to renewable sources, technologies like wind turbines are essential. So, Wein challenges students to come up with different designs for a turbine, and then tests their efficiency using a fan and an electricity meter.

But baked into the project is a thorny ethical challenge: how to build a giant structure that a community can live with.

“With offshore wind, there's a lot of people saying, ‘Not in my backyard.’ So how do we re-engineer a wind turbine so that you don't mind having it at your house?” Wein said.

 

Wein forces his students to confront ethical challenges in every assignment and every class discussion. For example, autonomous vehicles appear to hold a lot of utility at first glance. But what happens, Wein asks his students, when they put thousands of truckers and taxi drivers out of a job? Concrete is the most commonly-used construction material on Earth, Wein says. But it also comes with a huge carbon footprint.

It’s up to Wein’s students to solve these problems in his lab. But the long-term goal is more ambitious. Once students graduate, Wein and Porter hope they’ll try to tackle the same types of challenges as professionals, and that they’ll insist on doing so with the same spirit they learned to apply in “Principles of Engineering”—with empathy.

- by Kyle Bagenstose