Responsible Citizenship in a Technological Democracy

Dr. William A. Wulf, University Professor, Dept. of Computer Science University of Virginia, and President Emeritus, National Academy of Engineering gave the speech at the 2008 Engineer's Week dinner. One of the items he discussed is a seminar he presents to liberal arts freshmen titled "Responsible Citizenship in a Technological Democracy".

In this seminar, Dr. Wulf introduces public policy issues for discussion and then provides a written handout that describes a few science/engineering concepts that they need to really understand the public policy issue. In the following session, they review the material from the handout, discuss how it applies to the policy issue, and then start another public policy issue.

The Engineer's Week audience was encouraged to reach out to the community with similar concepts to help create more responsible citizens. As this is a work in progress, Dr. Wulf would like feedback from readers on the two areas mentioned below. You may contact him via e-mail with your comments and suggestions.

Please provide feedback with any comments and suggestions pertaining to the course content and the handouts.
Please provide feedback with any comments and suggestions about the most important Science and Engineering concepts that are NOT represented in his list of policy issues.

These are some of the discussion topics in the course with the related handouts:

Topic	Reading
Electric cars, hydrogen economy, & paper cups	Systems
Review electric cars, etc., as part of a system
Electric cars, etc., and efficiency	Energy
Review electric cars, etc., and thermodynamics
Public policy issues involving risk	Risk
Review risk, risk analysis and risk perception
Public policy issues involving safety and reliability	Safety, Reliability, & Testing
Review safety, reliability and testing
Public policy issues involving the S&E methods	Scientific and Engineering Methods
Review Scientific & Engineering methods
Public policy issues involving precision and accuracy	Precision vs. Accuracy
Review Precision vs accuracy
Public Policy Issues involving data and statistics	Statistics
Review Statistics
Public policy issues involving control & feedback	Control and Feedback
Review Control and feedback
Public policy issues involving complex systems	Complex Systems
Review Complex systems