Why aren’t we teaching maintenance in engineering?
Something is broken in how we teach STEM.
In a field cluttered by claims of innovation and disruption, our classrooms often omit the most important technical work performed in our society, to the detriment of our students and professionals alike.
As an educator with a background in repair, I believe that broadening our definition of engineering to include maintenance and repair is key to addressing the greatest challenges facing our profession and pedagogy.
Maintenance is sustainable
One of the most serious concerns confronting our discipline is sustainability. Much of the discourse on the topic focuses on developing less-damaging ways of producing things, and while this is certainly necessary, I fear that by focusing too narrowly on manufacturing, we are avoiding a more difficult conversation about consumption and production.
Making anything at an industrial scale, even “sustainably-produced” goods, consumes resources (energy and raw materials), and generates negative outputs (waste and emissions).
The end-of-life of our objects is problematic as well. Most of what we throw away goes directly to a landfill or into the natural environment as litter. A small fraction of our manufactured goods will be recycled, but recycling itself is a resource-intensive process and is only partially successful at recovering usable materials.
The missing piece is this:
We just need to produce less stuff.
This is where maintenance comes in. Many of the objects we use, including our vehicles, clothing, furniture, housewares, and even electronics, can be given extremely long lives if we chose to maintain them. Keeping these objects within the circle of use reduces the need to produce things to replace them, and the most sustainable objects are the ones that don’t need to be made.
Maintenance is inclusive
The fields of engineering and STEM disciplines broadly are facing a crisis of diversity and inclusion and expanding our understanding of what it means to be an engineer might be the solution.
For decades, race, gender, and class disparities in attainment of engineering degrees and jobs have been likened to a “leaky pipeline” — in which the “pipeline” is a sequence of educational and professional opportunities that lead to top achievement, and the “leaks” are barriers to accessing those opportunities.
While this metaphor might capture some aspects of the diversity dilemma, it also allows us to avoid looking at our professional values as a potential cause of the problem. What if the inside of the pipeline just isn’t that appealing?
I think that part of the issue is that our instructional programming focuses almost exclusively on the creation of new systems, rather than maintaining and improving existing systems, a distinction which is coded by gender, race, and class.
For example, men’s work has historically been the labor of production and women’s work has been the labor of maintenance (often uncompensated). Similarly, maintenance and repair jobs are more likely to be occupied by people of color, are considered less prestigious than engineering jobs, and are typically lower-paying.
In an excellent article on this topic, Olin engineering professor Debbie Chachra writes:
Maker culture, with its goal to get everyone access to the traditionally male domain of making, has focused on the first. But its success means that it further devalues the traditionally female domain of caregiving, by continuing to enforce the idea that only making things is valuable.
The result is that the work of maintaining the world that we have built for ourselves has fallen on to the shoulders of the people with the least say in designing it. The labor of maintenance is what goes unseen and undervalued when we obsess over the new. And given the prevalence of catchphrases like innovation and disruption in our discourse, how can we be surprised our society’s maintainers don’t feel at home in engineering?
Maintenance is fun
One of the toughest challenges that students face in a makerspace environment is overcoming the notion that they need to have a profound, well-researched project idea in order to start using the facilities. This impedes feelings of access or belonging among students, especially among non-white, non-male, and low-income students.
I’ve found that offering repair-based programming is a great way to break down these barriers. Projects like bicycle maintenance, clothing mending, and electronics repair are easy ways to introduce new students to a makerspace environment in a way that feels natural and connected to their lives.
In the absence of something that needs fixing, a mechanical dissection project is a great substitute for a repair project, and is a fun and engaging way to kick off an engineering class or workshop. Dissection items with some moving parts (small appliances, tools, record players, and RC cars are all great options) can be easily found at a local thrift shop, and can be taken apart using only hand tools: no state-of-the-art equipment necessary!
For younger students, I like to ask questions like:
What does this object do? How does it work? What is it made of?
And for more advanced students, I’ll ask them to produce engineering drawings and CAD models of components and assemblies that they find within their objects.
Repair and dissection projects give students a practical understanding of materials, fasteners, and the language of mechanical design. In my experience, this is a much more engaging way to start a course or introduce a makerspace than the “whiteboard and post-it notes” approach.
For me, repair and maintenance are deeply human aspects of engineering. To fix an object is to truly understand it, to appreciate the values of the people who designed it, and to validate the labor of the people who built it. It opens the doors of our profession to new types of makers, connects us to a concept of human purpose greater than ourselves, and empowers our students to take agency in their own education.
What more could we ask for?
