Kaitlin Litchfield

Engineers that are actively engaged with both the social and technical dimensions of engineering work—socially engaged engineers—offer diversity in skill sets, values, and characteristics to the engineering workforce. This diversity can help the engineering profession better address complex global challenges. Despite the value of socially engaged e...

Engineers must acquire increasing technical and professional skills to meet pressing global challenges, but fitting training for these skills into already crowded curricula is difficult. Engineering service may provide opportunities to gain such skills; however, prior research about learning outcomes from such activities has been primarily small-sc...

Background Socially engaged engineering activities such as community development have grown rapidly in popularity. The engineers who participate in these activities seem more diverse and more broadly interested than the larger population of engineers in the United States. Purpose/HypothesisThis article compares the personal attributes, specifically...

More than ever, future engineering students will need improved tools to more holistically understand the complexities inherent in planning, implementing, and managing, healthy and sustainable development projects. Programs such as Engineers without Borders (EWB) have always had the objective of teaching systems thinking skills to address the comple...

The present study is an empirical investigation of characteristics associated with membership in Engineers Without Borders (EWB). EWB is an international organization that has grown rapidly over the past decade. Despite this growth, few studies have investigated the characteristics of EWB members. The present study investigates these characteristic...

This paper presents a humanitarian engineering project in Denver, Colorado's Westwood community. This project was a collaboration with Metropolitan State University of Denver, the Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities at the University of Colorado Boulder and the non-profit community group ReVision International. This paper dis...

Engineers Without Borders-USA (EWB-USA), an organization with over 13,800 members involved in engineering service projects around the world, presents a large population for research on an engineering service activity. Although anecdotal evidence claims that EWB-USA may be helping to change the conversation about the engineering field, additional re...

There is a national need for an increased quantity of engineers. In addition to pure quantity, there are calls for a more diverse engineering population capable of addressing increasingly complex and global future challenges. Many acknowledge that current institu-tionalized models of education may not be filling these needs and that extracurricular...

In order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which require access to clean water and sanitation, UNESCO1 estimates that 2.5 million new engineers and technicians are needed in sub-Saharan Africa alone. Fortunately, engineers are responding to such needs through larger participation in engineering development organizations and curric...

With the growing demands for additional and diverse engineers, the atypical gender balance experienced by Engineers Without Borders-USA (EWB-USA) is a unique engineering education research setting. Exploring the gender balance of this organization could assist the field's efforts in better recruiting and retaining female engineers. In this work-in-...

This paper presents a humanitarian engineering project in Denver, Colorado's Westwood community. Under the guidance of Dr. Bernard Amadei, a team of graduate students from the University of Colorado created a simple and helpful technology solution for the community that could alleviate an identified problem common for households in Westwood. This p...

Currently, the engineering community faces shortages. These shortages can be conceptualized as both literal shortages of numbers, particularly females, and a more conceptual shortage of engineers who are trained and qualified to handle the transitioning global context of the profession. With its rapid growth, high female involvement, and global vis...

This recently initiated researchi, funded by the National Science Foundation's Division of Engineering Education and Centers, investigates the motivations driving members of the service organization Engineers Without Borders-USA (EWB-USA) in the theoretical context of identity and social cognitive theory. As a rare example of a professional enginee...