From Utilitarianism to Care: Evolving Tensions in Engineering Education

February 20, 2026 | 11:00a.m. | 223 Jarvis Hall

What do we teach our students to care about? How do we help them reinforce or challenge their paradigms? And which paradigms do we intentionally promote within engineering training? These value-laden questions lie at the core of what engineering education is and how it is designed and executed. Acknowledging that the new generations of learners are breaking away from neoliberalist perspectives rooted in utilitarianism we need to examine the core set of beliefs that will contribute to the evolution of engineering as a field and strike a balance with students’ broader views of success. In this talk, I will unpack these tensions using frameworks of care, while discussing empirical results of projects conducted at the DAREtoCARE Lab. Results from research projects ranging from the mental health of engineering undergraduates and professionals, policymaking affecting the advancement of women faculty in engineering and the training of socially responsible engineers will be discussed. Future directions derived from this research, their implications for the training of future generations of equity-minded engineers, especially within the context of environmental engineering, will also be addressed. 

Dr. Matilde Sánchez-Peña is an assistant professor of Engineering Education at SUNY University at Buffalo where she founded and leads the Diversity Assessment Research in Engineering to Catalyze the Advancement of Respect and Equity (DAREtoCARE) Lab. Her research focuses on the development of cultures of care and wellbeing in engineering education spaces, assessing gains in institutional efforts to advance equity and inclusion using a complex systems perspective, and the use of data science for training socially responsible engineers. Through her teaching and mentoring she also aims to connect research to practice through the training of the next generations of equity-minded instructional designers. She was recognized with the 2021 Apprentice Faculty Award by the Educational Research Methods Division of American Society for Engineering Education, and with the best paper award within the same division in 2023.