Liberal Education/Engineering & Society (LEES) Division
Call for Papers and Proposals
The Liberal Education/Engineering & Society (LEES) Division invites abstracts for papers and
posters, and proposals for full sessions, panel discussions, workshops, and non-traditional
session formats for the ASEE Annual Conference, June 22 – 25, 2025 in Montreal, Quebec,
Canada. We especially welcome sessions that highlight local collaborators and engineering
practice and engagement in and around Montreal and/or reimagine the traditional conference
paper-session. If you would like to propose a non-paper or poster-centered session of any
kind, please email the LEES Program Chair, Kari Zacharias, at
kari.zacharias@umanitoba.ca as early as possible. We are excited to work with you on
planning, proposing, and reviewing these sessions.
LEES is interested in the role of the humanities, arts, social sciences, and communication in
engineering education, and in the role of engineering in broad and relevant liberal education.
Engineering processes and products are value-laden; work in LEES calls attention to implicit
and explicit values in engineering education. LEES welcomes proposals related to any of the
diverse areas falling within the scope of our division, including but not limited to: critical analysis
of social and ethical dimensions of technoscience; situating engineering within larger social,
historical, political, and cultural contexts; course- and curricular-level integration of engineering
and the humanities, arts, and social sciences; and the development, study, and transformation
of engineering education programs.
LEES welcomes submissions on any topic pertaining to the broader division goals. For the 2025
conference, we especially encourage work that pertains to the specific themes below. We
encourage prospective contributors to consider building collaborations across ASEE divisions
that might support our scholarship and capacity building. Past LEES work has had strong
overlaps with, among other divisions: Ethics; Equity, Culture & Social Justice in Education; and
Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering.
- Engineering Education for Truth and Reconciliation
We invite submissions that explore engineers’ past and present connections with
colonialism, as well as ways that engineering education can support Indigenous
sovereignty and actions towards truth and reconciliation. Work in this area may analyze
the role of engineering in (re)creating colonial relationships (Nieusma & Riley, 2010),
examine engineers’ engagement with Indigenous communities (Ketchum et al., 2023), or
critically explore STEM education as a space for reconciliation, decolonization, or
Indigenization (Liboiron, 2021; Valle, Slaton, & Riley 2022). We welcome contributions
that address colonialism, decolonization, and reconciliation in a wide variety of local
contexts, including but not limited to American and Canadian settler colonialism and the
many Indigenous cultures of Turtle Island (North America).
- Engineering and Conflict
Engineers have long played significant roles in global politics, war, and revolution, but
the field of engineering education has shown reluctance to confront its own involvement:
“to write of politics, activism, or past events is not to engage in any familiar way with
engineering epistemics” (Slaton & Vakil, 2024). We invite contributions that contravene
this norm by examining relationships between engineering and conflict, both in the literal
sense of engineers’ involvement in war, protest, labor disputes, etc. (Nieusma & Blue,
2012; Riley & Lambrinidou, 2015; Wisnioski, 2012) and as an analytical category that
can be applied to teaching and/or research in engineering education (Tonn & Hira,
2024). In the context of ongoing geopolitical conflicts, rights violations, and anti-DEI
legislative efforts, how might engineering education prepare students for conversations,
considerations, and choices that acknowledge and address conflict?
- Engineering and Climate Change
We invite submissions that focus on engineering values and practices pertaining to
energy transition, decarbonization, and sustainability broadly. While engineering has
contributed to climate change, it has also hidden the evidence (Oreskes & Conway,
2011) and dodged or denied responsibility (Pawley, 2019). With states’ increased
attention to justice in energy transition and environmental racism (Heffron, 2022;
Sovacool, 2021), we ask, how might engineering education prepare students to
participate in complicated, global, and local sociotechnical transitions for climate change
mitigation?
- Sociotechnical Integration in Engineering Education: LEES leads efforts to critique
and dissolve the artificial boundaries between “social” and “technical” to show that
engineering is always a sociotechnical endeavor. LEES work holds engineers
accountable for understanding how to bridge the socio-technical “divide,” and minimizing
discriminatory disciplinary chauvinism (Reddy et al., 2023; Bairaktarova & Pilotte, 2020;
Smith & Smith, 2018; Carrigan & Bardini, 2021). This work may be done on a variety of
scales, from the personal to the cross-institutional. We especially welcome submissions
that recognize, analyze, and otherwise engage with a “generative tension” among LEES
participants, a group that serves as a venue for engineering educators grounded in
science and technology studies and/or engineering studies and also makes space for
liberal arts education program building which includes promoting the importance of
communication and professional skills, etc (Nieusma, 2015).
The first step for all submission formats is an abstract or proposal. Abstracts for papers and
posters must be submitted via Nemo by October 1, 2024. Note that this is one month earlier
than past abstract submission deadlines! Abstracts should be approximately 300-500 words
long and will be peer reviewed.
We will also work to incorporate a wide variety of other formats into the peer review system,
designate them as special sessions, or otherwise find ways to include this work in the
conference. We plan to repeat the special session format on teaching case studies that LEES
hosted at the 2024 conference. Please stay tuned for more information about submissions to
this session! If your proposal does not fit comfortably into the submission options available
through Nemo, please email LEES Program Chair Kari Zacharias
(kari.zacharias@umanitoba.ca) to initiate the submission and review process.
ASEE is once again adamant that they will not extend any deadlines this year because
they are trying to adapt a standard, annual calendar. Information for Authors will be posted
by ASEE regarding submission times and uploading instructions. All paper submissions are
publish-to-present and will be peer reviewed by the LEES Division process after submission to
ASEE’s paper management system. Abstracts and papers are double-blind reviewed. It is the
author’s responsibility to ensure that the requirements for double-blind review are met. The
abstract and subsequent drafts should NOT include authors’ names or institutional affiliations
nor should author names be in the file name or in document properties. It is not necessary to
include references in the abstract. Additional information will be shared to the listserv for current
members and the LEES website as the year progresses.
To share ideas for panels/workshops or any questions about possible papers, panels,
co-sponsoring with other divisions or other special session concepts, or to express interest in
serving as a peer reviewer or session moderator, please contact the program chair.