About

Benjamin Joseph Laugelli is an associate professor of engineering and society at the University of Virginia's School of Engineering and Applied Science. His work examines social and ethical aspects of technology and engineering practice, with research emphases including science, technology & society (STS), engineering ethics, engineering education, sustainable design values, technology and science fiction, and the LEGO Group’s design values and practices. His academic background includes a B.S. in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences from James Madison University, an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia. In his role, Laugelli explores how engineers, through designing and building technologies, influence and shape societies. His teaching encompasses courses on contemporary issues in science and technology, the ethics of engineering, and the integration of sustainable development goals into engineering education. His contributions extend to fostering ethical innovation and promoting sustainable design practices within engineering education, emphasizing the social and ethical responsibilities of engineers in creating a better world.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Engineering
• Engineering ethics
• Psychology
• Engineering management
• Pedagogy
• Social Science
• Mathematics education
• Public relations
• Knowledge management
• Art
• Law
• Mechanical engineering
• Marketing
• Library science
• Business
• Art history

Selected publications

• WIP: Using Challenge Essential Questions to Connect Technical, Social, and Ethical Content in a First-Year Engineering Program

  2025-08-21

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Frankenstein Lives! Teaching Mary Shelley's Novel in the Engineering Classroom

  2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Art

  Abstract Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein tells a terrifying cautionary tale that warns against unethical practices in science and engineering. In a previous study, I examined several ethical themes, drawn from Shelley's novel, that are discussed in a non-technical STS course I developed for engineering undergraduates. These themes center on the novel's critique of Victor Frankenstein's irresponsible, presumptuous, unaccountable, and biased practice of techno-science. The present study performs a thematic analysis of a series of reflections written by students at the end of the course that address how reading Frankenstein has influenced their approach to engineering work. The reflections indicate that students were able to articulate several ethical themes that emerge from the novel's depiction of Victor Frankenstein's practice of rogue techno-science and, building on those themes, express their commitment to more socially responsible engineering practices.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Learning through Play: Using LEGO® Products, Practices, and Values to Teach Social and Ethical Aspects of Engineering Design

  2024-02-06

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract For over twenty years college instructors have successfully integrated LEGO® products into undergraduate engineering classrooms to facilitate active learning experiences in engineering design. These experiences allow students to develop core technical proficiencies primarily related to robotics and computer programming. Despite the successful adoption of LEGO Mindstorms to teach valuable technical skills in robotics, LEGO products and practices have not been widely included in non-technical engineering classroom settings to facilitate students' understanding of social and ethical aspects of engineering design. If LEGO products and practices could be integrated into a course in science, technology, and society (STS), as they have been into technical robotics courses, this might help students appreciate the relevance of STS and ethical concepts to engineering design challenges. With this in mind, I developed a course in STS called The LEGO Course: Engineering Design and Values. The course pairs a seminar discussion with a studio design experience to integrate the teaching of STS and ethical perspectives with authentic engineering design challenges oriented around the LEGO Group's products, practices, and core values. Student reflections and evaluations suggest that the course effectively leverages the LEGO Group's philosophy of "learning through play" to convey the value that social and ethical perspectives bring to engineering design.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Work in Progress: A Novel Two-Semester Course Sequence that Integrates Engineering Design, Sociotechnical Skills, Career Development, and Academic Advising

  2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Engineering ethics
  • Pedagogy

  Shaylin Williams is invested in identifying ways to improve the engineering education experience for future generations of engineers.As a McNair Scholar, Shaylin worked on chemical engineering projects creating thermal barriers for food packaging

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Rogue Engineering: Teaching Frankenstein as a Parable of (Un)ethical Engineering Practice

  2024 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Engineering ethics

  Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein is widely regarded as a foundational work of early science fiction that cautions against misguided and unethical science and engineering. As such, the novel should be poised to help engineering undergraduates cultivate moral imagination and a commitment to socially responsible techno-science. However, despite recent critical editions of the novel that highlight its relevance for scientists and engineers, some instructors have faced difficulties successfully integrating the novel into an undergraduate engineering curriculum, and students have struggled to appreciate its value to their ethical formation as engineering professionals. Nevertheless, the novel's potential to address ethical aspects of engineering practice calls for further attempts at integrating it into engineering education. In particular, the archetypal figure of Victor Frankenstein offers students a model of a negative "possible self" that cautions against rogue engineering practices. The paper analyzes themes from Shelley's novel as they were used in courses in science, technology, and society (STS) to foster ethical reflection on the perils of practicing irresponsible, presumptuous, unaccountable, and biased techno-science.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Communication Across Divisions: Trends Emerging from the 2019 Annual Conference of ASEE and Some Possibilities for Strategic Action

  2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings · 2020 · 2 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Communication in the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Designing for a Sustainable World: Integrating the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into a First-year Engineering Course in Science, Technology, and Society

  2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings · 2020-09-08

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract I am an instructor in a teaching team for a required first-year engineering course in science, technology and society (STS). The course enrolls 360-400 students each semester, and its primary learning goals are to introduce students to social and ethical aspects of engineering practice. The main deliverable in the course is a provisional patent application in which students describe a technological design they have developed in class. In previous semesters students would develop ideas for the patent application with relatively few parameters. They could generate ideas for nearly any kind of innovative technological device, process, service, or system as long as they could describe and illustrate it in 6-8 pages. These open-ended parameters, however, tended to hinder instead of inspire student engagement and creativity. The ideas students came up with were often trivial and unimaginative; they frequently addressed problems of no greater significance than that of minor inconvenience. For example, each semester would yield various designs for collapsible backpack umbrellas and automated erasers for dry-erase boards. Equally problematic was that students struggled to see the value of the patent application assignment to engineering practice. On course evaluations they frequently voiced that it was difficult to appreciate the project’s relevance to a career in engineering especially as they were unlikely to become inventors or patent attorneys. Further, students had a hard time understanding how the patent assignment related to what they were learning in class lectures about social and ethical aspects of engineering practice. For example, students would often complain that the labs and lectures seemed like two distinct courses. Because students had difficulty appreciating the value of the patent assignment, they were less motivated to challenge themselves and invest in the project. According to Ambrose et al. in their book How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching, “fail[ure] to address students’ perceived lack of value for a given task or goal” can contribute to patterns of evasion or rejection [1]. These patterns often lead students “to disengage from learning situations” or to commit only to “the minimum amount of work that is needed to just get by” [1]. In view of these challenges, Ambrose and her colleagues recommend several strategies designed “to increase the value that students place on the goals and activities” of a course [1]. Among them are connecting course materials to “issues that are important to students” and to “real-world event[s]” and the needs of “an actual client in the community” [1]. Building on these principles, I proposed reorienting the patent assignment around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in order to augment students’ perception of its value for their learning and professional development. I developed a scenario for the project in which a trust affiliated with the university had issued a Request for Proposal that invites engineering undergraduates to submit patent applications for technologies that could help the university community achieve one or more of the SDGs. Because most of the SDGs touch on matters of social justice and equity, to write the new patent assignment students would need to integrate practical technical expertise with an understanding of social and ethical aspects of engineering design. The revised assignment, then, would help students appreciate the importance of integrating the practical and technical with the social and ethical as well as how projects undertaken in the labs complement themes addressed in course lectures. In what follows I elaborate how I developed the new patent assignment for a pilot summer version of the course and how it was then implemented in the main course in the Fall 2019 semester. I also explain how students at once welcomed and resisted working with the SDGs and the effects that reorienting the patent assignment around them have had on their perception of the course’s value. References [1] S. Ambrose, M. Bridges, and M Lovett, How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Deepyaman Maiti

  University of Virginia

  1 shared

• Esther Tian

  University of Virginia

  1 shared

• Judith Shaul Norback

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  1 shared

• Nicole Dufalla

  University of Virginia

  1 shared

• Keith A. Williams

  University of Virginia

  1 shared

• Benjamin Goldschneider

  Virginia Tech

  1 shared

• Charlie Bennett

  1 shared

• Anna Leyf Starling

  University of Virginia

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Grounds Engaged Learning for Sustainability (GELS) Grant, Un…
• Dissertation Writing Grant, University of Virginia, Departme…