Bell-Huff wants to understand how engineering educators can foster all three of those dimensions of empathy in their students so they’re ready to tackle the global grand challenges and complex health problems they will encounter. She’s taking the first steps this year in a National Science Foundation-supported project examining learning activities in five core classes in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, where Bell-Huff is a lecturer and director of faculty and student training.

The idea is to talk to faculty members, collect pre- and post-course surveys from students, look at the projects students complete, and talk to students about their work, Bell-Huff said.

“We really want to understand which learning activities foster empathy,” she said, “and if they do foster empathy, what construct of empathy — is it mostly just about perspective-taking or are we getting into some emotion sharing?”

Bell-Huff said that students no doubt have knowledge about empathy — even if it’s not explicitly called that — but the key is converting that knowledge into action. That’s where she thinks the Department’s story-driven learning initiatives will be particularly effective.

“My thought is that story-driven learning is going to be the kind of thing that could foster that whole construct of empathy: You hear somebody's story, you share in their emotions, you feel the urge to comfort them or encourage them. You feel moved to act,” Bell-Huff said. “So, I want to compare all of our learning activities to that of story-driven learning as well and see.”

Teaching empathy to engineering students is more than design thinking, too. It’s a skill essential to working in teams, collaborating with others, and exercising leadership — experiences common across engineering curriculum and practice.