By Charli Engelhorn
Mutually beneficial relationship between the disciplines of social work and engineering is not necessarily an obvious combination.
However, leaders from the USC School of Social Work and USC Viterbi School of Engineering believe collaboration between the two fields is a completely appropriate development.
“There is an organic relationship between social work and several other disciplines in a historical holistic perspective,” said Haluk Soydan, associate dean of research at the School of Social Work and director of the school’s Hamovitch Center for Science in the Human Services. “Engineering is about technical solutions, and social work is about social solutions. When you come down to it, there are questions and areas of interest that make them close to each other.”
Soydan refers to this bridge between the disciplines as “social engineering,” a term first coined by philosopher Karl Popper to represent the methods used to find and apply solutions to social problems through the use of social technology. Yannis C. Yortsos, dean of USC Viterbi, agrees with Soydan, stating that engineering’s contribution to the development of digital media has significant potential to promote the mission of social work.
“I define technology as exploiting phenomena for useful purposes — exploiting meaning collaborating and leveraging technology, taking something and making something else out of it,” Yortsos said. “I believe we will see a convergence with social phenomena, and disciplines like social work will borrow or implement or partner with technologies and ways of thinking that have an engineering aspect.”
The makings of this collaboration largely hail from a joint summit held last summer between the schools. The summit gave engineering faculty members the opportunity to discuss how they articulated the grand challenges of their profession and areas where crossover exists with social work.