Grand Challenges in Engineering

Catalog description

Did you choose an engineering degree because you want to make a difference in the world? From protecting public health and the environment to improving education, security and wellbeing, humanity faces dire challenges as well as exciting opportunities to improve life in the 21st Century. This course will explore how engineers, working in concert with other disciplines, can play an important role in addressing such Grand Challenges and how RIT faculty and students are already making progress. You will learn how you too can start building a better future in the Grand Challenges Scholars Program even while you are still completing your undergraduate degree! Using the global initiatives of the National Academy of Engineering's 'Grand Challenges' Program and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for direction, the course seeks to broaden students' vision of technological problem solving, explore how engineers/scientists can participate in meeting key societal needs, and introduce some of the social and ethical questions that must also be considered. Seminars by campus and local experts will expose students to the challenges and the interdisciplinary approaches required to address them. Opportunities available on campus for students to meet the five Grand Challenges Competencies will be presented along with examples of work from graduating scholars. As part of the course, students will generate all the materials required for an application to the RIT Grand Challenges Scholars Program, and if they wish, they may submit them for consideration for program entry at the end of the course.