What is the role of the nuclear engineer and how is it learned? Motivated by the Fukushima Nuclear Accident, the 2011 Advanced Summer School of Nuclear Engineering and Management with Social-Scientific Literacy provided an occasion to reexamine the role of nuclear engineers.  Students don’t just need the different approaches offered by the social sciences–they want to learn them. Historically, there has been very little space in the curriculum for students to think about nuclear engineering more broadly, little tolerance of positions that question the safety and necessity of nuclear power, and limited resources to facilitate an informed discussion about these topics. Despite these challenges, students are actively seeking alternative ways to address the multidimensional Post-Fukushima problems that are not amenable to engineering’s traditional utilitarian reasoning and optimization studies.