in the Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering Department. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University and has focused her research efforts on knowledge transfer in global organizations, global projects, and increasing the number of underrepresented minorities in engineering.
Kaitlin Litchfield received her undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering at the University of New Hampshire and is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Colorado Boulder in the Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering Department within the Mortenson Center for Engineering in Developing Communities. Her research interest is in recruiting, educating, and retaining engineers capable of meeting global development challenges, and her current work is focused on understanding engineers involved specifically with Engineers Without Borders-USA.
This paper describes and analyzes a new program implemented by Engineers Without Borders-USA (EWB), JETS, Westlake High School (Atlanta, GA), and the Georgia Institute of Technology that introduces pre-college students to the field of engineering through the use of EWB-focused service learning engineering activities. This initiative differs from other high school engineering programs that emphasize competitions in that it highlights important engineering design concepts by rooting the students' motivation in the desire to help those in need. This emphasis on engineering-themed service projects allows for real-world reinforcement of sustainable engineering practices and promotes the education of ethically responsible and internationally aware students. We postulate that this move away from competition-based motivations and towards community service will be particularly appealing to non-traditional engineering students such as minorities and women. This paper will examine the case study of EWB-Westlake High School, the first ever high school EWB chapter, which was chartered in the Fall of 2006, and conducted a work trip to Tanzania in July, 2007. The program assessment surveys address which specific activities were effective and which need future refinement, and explore the impact that an engineering service learning program can have on the future goals of the students involved. In addition, two new initiatives will be highlighted; a new national initiative that promotes engineering-focused service learning in high schools, and a local initiative focused on bringing service learning themes into preengineering curricula throughout the state of Georgia. This paper will include an alignment of program activities with state and national education standards, and should provide other high schools with the tools to initiate their own programs.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.