EPP's Undergraduate Program:
Mission Statement

The Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) is a unique engineering department, whose overall objective is to enhance undergraduate engineering education with the perspectives and skills that enable the engineer to understand and work at the interface between technology and society. Society is largely responsible for setting the goals and framing the problems that engineers work on. However, technologies designed by engineers profoundly change the societies in which they operate. Technology has enabled a healthier, richer and more productive society. At the same time, technology has contributed to the creation of many of the more serious problems our society faces.

Technology can help us build a happier, freer, and more fulfilling life, while maintaining risks and undesirable impacts at acceptable levels. But that does not happen automatically. It takes careful hard work by people who understand both technology and the society in which they live. In order to do their jobs responsibly and well in today.s world, engineers must develop an understanding of the interface between technology and society and a command of the skills necessary to work at that interface. The undergraduate degree programs of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) have been designed to allow engineering students at Carnegie Mellon University to add this important dimension to their traditional engineering education. EPP double major graduates, for the most part, will enter traditional engineering careers ...and in doing so will carry with them a set of insights and skills that will help them to better deal with issues in technology and policy, and better exercise their ethical and social obligations as practicing professionals.