I loved art when I was in third grade. I vividly remember
joyfully painting for a class assignment. However, as my education career
progressed, I was in fewer and fewer art classes each year until I reached
university where I took no art classes. This is a shame because so much of
engineering requires creativity. While to this day, I continue to pursue my
creativity through different means, it has not been stressed in any of my
classes.
The US education system has definitely perpetuated many
stereotypes about engineering being a male dominated field. For example, most
people are surprised when I say I’m studying engineering because they expect an
engineering student to be male. As a matter of fact, 70-80% of my peers in my
classes are male. This perpetuation of stereotypes about engineers can also be
seen in the architecture on UCLA campus. Not only are the engineering buildings
uglier, they also have equally unappealing names. Also, while the north campus
buildings on campus have “prettier” and artsy names (such as Broad, Bunche,
Rolfe), majority of the engineering building are simply the word “Engineering”
followed by a number (e.g. Engineering IV, Engineering V etc.). Even the south
campus libraries have more methodical, straight-to-the-point names like the
Science and Engineering library (vs Powell in north campus).
These stereotypes about engineering being a no-nonsense field continue to perpetuate the idea that engineers are wildly different from artists. In fact, engineering requires tremendous amounts of creativity to produce innovative solutions. Similarly, many art techniques require similar precision and attention to detail as engineering manufacturing methods. The emergence of the “nerd culture”(a new third culture) and the STEAM movement is promising as it might bring art and engineering closer together. This new nerd culture is forcing a marriage between pop culture and technology, which might lead to changes in the STEM world.
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| Royce Hall in North Campus |
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| Boelter Hall in South Campus |
These stereotypes about engineering being a no-nonsense field continue to perpetuate the idea that engineers are wildly different from artists. In fact, engineering requires tremendous amounts of creativity to produce innovative solutions. Similarly, many art techniques require similar precision and attention to detail as engineering manufacturing methods. The emergence of the “nerd culture”(a new third culture) and the STEAM movement is promising as it might bring art and engineering closer together. This new nerd culture is forcing a marriage between pop culture and technology, which might lead to changes in the STEM world.
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| Scaled Composites' White Knight Two: Unique aircraft that required tremendous creativity and engineering to produce. |
Bibliography
Graham-Rowe, Duncan. John Brockman: Matchmaking
with science John Brockman. 3 February 2011.
Kelly, Kevin. "The Third Culture." Science
Mag 13 February 1998. Website.
Vesna, Victoria. "Toward a Third Culture: Being
in between." Leonardo (2001): 121-125. Database.
Wilson, Stephen. Myths and Confusions in Thinking
about Art/Science/Technology. San Francisco, 2000. Paper.
Snow, Charles Percy. The
Two Cultures and The Scientific Revolution: The Rede Lecture, 1959.
University Press, 1959.
Images:
Herkewitz, William. "Bizarre Aircraft We Love and the Stories Behind Them." Popular Mechanics (2015). Article. 5 April 2018.
Kang, Jiwan. 2015. <http://jiwanjk.bol.ucla.edu>.
I agree with you that the more we advanced academically the fewer art classes that we took that year. And now in college it is pretty rare when I do encounter any art at all that interests me as much as in my youth when art was something that I got to appreciate doing everyday. Also I am an English major and I rarely go to any building in south campus, but every so often I like to just walk around campus after class and admire the different building structures of different departments. Although I had never really focused on the building names until now that you mentioned it the names are very dull. My favorite building is Perloff Hall well more like the projects inside full of really different home designs that would make really interesting homes if ever built. Those pictures you have do make the difference in campus even more evidently different when it comes to the structure and color for the scenery. Hopefully there will be more females within your field sooner than later. What engineering major are you part of? Do you still take classes in the north side of campus?
ReplyDeleteThere are definitely a ton of stereotypes of engineering being a male dominated field. I grew up not even knowing what engineers do because I was a girl and despite being the top of my class in math and science my teachers never saw past my gender to recommend it to me. And your observations on the buildings being different at UCLA depending on what type of classes you are taking is also very prudent. I will sometimes see cockroaches crawling around in my engineering discussions, but my humanities GE's always seem to have beautiful windows or architecture to showcase. I have even noticed that tour groups for new students will avoid going inside some of the engineering buildings, but will spend much more time describing the beauty of Royce or Powell. I agree that the emergence of STEAM is a promising start of bridging the gap between the two seemingly different cultures, there is so much more work to be done. It is difficult to change such institutionalized separation of the two cultures in places like schools or the workplace. Hopefully new generations will begin to bridge the gap in these places.
ReplyDeleteI agree wiht your point about the stereotypes of the field of engineering. I too am guilty of this even though I have close girl family members that are involved in engineering. I found your points about the names of different buildings wether they be on north campus or south campus interesting and oddly true. Its crazy to think how much of these two cultures have not only affect us but also our stereotypes, and naming of objects.
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