Learning and Service in Engineering and Global Development

In Spring 2004, students in Smith College's new Picker Engineering Program teamed up with the community-based organization Nuestras Raices in Holyoke, MA to address the problem of wood-fired oven emissions posed by the successful and expanding operation of Nuestras' entrepreneurial project, the El Jardin Bakery. This partnership between El Jardin and the Picker Engineering Program developed in the context of a new course, “Engineering and Global Development,” which aimed to achieve such pedagogical goals as: developing an understanding and critical view of globalization and global development engineering; developing analytic and implementation skills related to the design and construction of technological solutions in developing settings; and critiquing the “expert” model learning relationships that operate both in the classroom and in the community. Though global in overall perspective, the course engaged multifaceted challenges of engineering, economic and human development. We found these challenges analogous across communities that are similarly distressed by pressures of globalization and human need, such as those affecting low-income, poorly-resourced communities worldwide. We also found the ambitious marriage among engineering education, development studies, and liberative pedagogies to provide profound challenges equaled by pedagogical, educational, and experiential rewards.