Tufts University - Index

Tufts University - Tufts Tisch College Beyond Boundaries - Index

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C H R S S WA N
Associate Professor and Chair, Department
of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Adjunct Associate Professor, Tisch College
of Citizenship and Public Service
Advisor, Tufts Chapter of Engineers
Without Borders
Chris Swan felt a yawning gap between the right-answer,
black-and-white way that engineering students were
trained in the classroom, and the complex, confusing,
nuanced reality of working as an engineer. The solution?
Get his students out in the field, from Roxbury to Ecuador,
and let them test their own wings as citizen-engineers.
“ When I take students to an Ecuadorian village to create
‘green’ houses, it’s about teaching them to apply their
knowledge in holistic ways, to solve societal problems.
You can call that altruism—but it’s what engineers should
do! They need to be technically excellent. But they also
need to evaluate every problem in its social, cultural,
political, environmental, material, and economic context.
That’s when you start doing the real work of engineering.”
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