Engineering Innovation for Global Challenges Minor

This minor equips students from various academic backgrounds to leverage engineering innovation in addressing the greatest challenges facing our world today. With a focus on the knowledge, tools, techniques and mindsets that have evolved in engineering innovation from the Industrial Revolution to the Second Machine Age with its self-driving cars, next-generation robots, and 3D printing, this minor brings time-tested principles together with novel, integrated approaches to bear upon wicked problems such as climate change, human displacement, pandemics, access to education, and a widening socio-economic gap. In pursuing these grand challenges, engineers, scientists, innovators and entrepreneurs must increasingly frame their work to address areas of human concern – sustainability, health, vulnerability, and the joy of living – while they lead the design of ingenious products, services and technologies with a human-centered approach.

This is a minor for a new generation of students who see themselves as makers, inventors, entrepreneurs, engineers, designers and peace builders, who want to create real solutions and put them to work against the wicked problems. The minor prepares students to think globally and develop culturally relevant perspectives and teaches the skills that not only inform the way we work in diverse teams but also shape the future of global collaboration.