J Ottinger—Technoscience and Environmental Justice 9 Rupturing Engineering Education: Opportunities for Transforming Expert Identities through Community-Based Projects Gwen Ottinger Transformations of scientiic activities and approaches have been a central focus of the studies collected in this book. The chapters consider movement toward and barriers to, for example, new ethics for reporting results of biomedical research to study participants (Morello-Frosch et al.) and revised frameworks for assessing the risks posed to minority communities by environmental contamination (Johnson and Ranco; Powell and Powell). But in addition to analyzing shifts in what scientists and engineers do, these studies point to shifting relationships between technical practitioners and other participants in environmental justice advocacy. In the process of acting differently—feeding biomonitoring results directly back to community campaigns (Morello-Frosch et al.), or working at a middle level to create effective rural electriication programs (Nieusma)—scientists and engineers disrupt the hierarchies that usually attend technical expertise and, ultimately, redeine the role they play as experts. Indeed, the incomplete transformations and missed opportuni- ties highlighted by several chapters are attributable in no small part to technical professionals’ unwillingness or inability to step out of their traditional, “expert” roles: EPA scientists sought Native American par- ticipation in risk assessment while retaining all of their power as state experts (Johnson and Ranco); scientists at the Clean Air and Water Network redeined their project to include community organizing and engagement but never found a meaningful way to share their expertise with community members (Hoffman). Seeing technical practitioners’ ability to transform expert roles as central to their ability to take advantage of ruptures in scientiic practice begs the question: How do scientists and engineers ind—or not ind— room to maneuver in their understandings of their professional identities and their appropriate relationships with others involved in environ- mental justice? Frickel (chapter 1, this volume) points to educational 8702_009.indd 229 12/31/2010 7:17:31 PM