Teaching Community Engagement to Engineers via a Workshop Approach

Abstract

Engineers design and create solutions to solve problems and positively impact people’s lives. Unfortunately, traditional engineering training does not prepare students to engage with the people in the community where they will work. This creates an engagement gap between the skills of engineers and their ability to communicate with a community to solve problems. To decrease this engagement gap, the authors developed a community engagement workshop that introduces engineering graduate students and early professionals to the complexities and challenges of community engagement and development. During the 2-day workshop, participants engaged in a variety of exercises that helped them to listen to their community partners, look beyond the technology, and empower the community. This article describes the workshop’s learning objectives, design, activities, and implementation challenges as a resource for educators developing programs to train socially engaged engineers.