Jessica M. Smith’s research while affiliated with Colorado School of Mines and other places

Green stormwater infrastructure mirrors natural hydrologic processes and is presented as an alternative or complement to traditional gray stormwater infrastructure, which uses concrete channels and pipes to convey flows away from neighborhoods. To encourage green infrastructure installation, practitioners promote co-benefits, also called ancillary social, ecological, and environmental benefits. Co-benefits are accrued at the neighborhood-scale, yet the public is not often asked to weigh in on its preferred outcomes. This study surveys the public with a goal to move beyond economic valuation to obtain a better understanding of preference for green infrastructure and how respondents value co-benefits. A representative sample of residents in three US cities (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Denver, Colorado; and Seattle, Washington) were presented informational material and then queried for their preference for different infrastructure types and 16 co-benefits. Results show that preferences for stormwater infrastructure, as well as value assigned to associated co-benefits, vary across cities and different demographic groups. Of the three cities in this study, Philadelphia residents had a higher preference for gray infrastructure to handle stormwater in their neighborhood. As the level of survey respondent's educational attainment increased, so did their preference for new installations of green infrastructure. Perceived value of co-benefits was generally high but varied across different co-benefit/demographic group pairings. The value of community amenity benefits (e.g., increased recreational opportunities) was found to vary between study cities. Public attitudes toward increased property values varied by age and race; attitudes toward community gardens varied by economic security; and attitudes towards improved water quality varied by race. Study results show that stormwater infrastructure and co-benefits are not valued uniformly across demographic groups and vary regionally. We advocate that practitioners engage a representative subset of the population within the appropriate area, especially where infrastructure is planned, to ensure stormwater solutions promote social and environmental equity.

La colaboración internacional en proyectos humanitarios es cada vez más una parte importante de la educación de los ingenieros en su formación básica de pregrado, en especial cuando se trata de involucrar y retener a las mujeres en los programas de ingeniería. Sin embargo, estos proyectos frecuentemente están restringidos por limitaciones presupuestales y de tiempo. Para respetar la necesidad de que los proyectos humanitarios estén basados en el conocimiento local y el entendimiento de los contextos sociales complejos, junto con el interés común entre muchas mujeres estudiantes de programas de ingeniería de involucrarse en la comunidad, este artículo sintetiza la literatura sobre el Procedimiento de Evaluación Rápida (en inglés RAP , que significa “Rapid Assessment Procedure”) cómo puede utilizarse para permitir que los estudiantes de ingeniería obtengan un entendimiento rápido y profundo de las comunidades internacionales con las cuales están colaborando. El RAP es una herramienta de antropología que incorpora métodos etnográficos para ganar rápidamente un entendimiento amplio de los aspectos relevantes de sistemas sociotécnicos complejos. Algunas de las características principales del RAP son 1) formación de equipos de investigación multidisciplinarios, 2) inclusión de miembros de la comunidad de diversos grupos de interés, 3) colección de datos multimétodo, como entrevistas, observación de participantes, evidencia escrita e histórica y métodos cuantitativos, 4) verificación de las conclusiones por triangulación de datos, 5) colección y análisis iterativo de los datos, y 6) conclusión rápida. Este artículo propone el RAP como una herramienta que puede ayudar a la ingeniería para proyectos de desarrollo a alinearse mejor con los marcos de ingeniería humanitaria y, al hacerlo, brindar a los estudiantes de ingeniería, especialmente mujeres, mayores beneficios educativos. Este documento destaca la implementación del RAP durante una sesión de campo, diseñada para que los estudiantes de ingeniería de EE. UU. colaboren con profesores y estudiantes colombianos como parte de un proyecto más grande de la Fundación Nacional de Ciencia de EE. UU.

Environmental remediation of polluted sites in developing communities often faces difficulties due to the misalignment of project objectives with the needs and interests of local communities, establishment of unrealistic expectations for the outcome of the project, and failure to account for the available resources in the community itself. Remediation decisions favor technical data and technical solutions as the main means of determining remediation options, requiring significant investment and local capacity that are often not found in developing communities. Often these systems fail to account for the social aspects in environmental management and remediation. In contrast, new approaches in local knowledge-based solutions focus on pre-existing environmental management initiatives to establish objectives that are meaningful to the community itself. “Positive deviance” – or the idea that there are solutions already in communities that are successful at addressing challenges despite the barriers that a community faces – are often overlooked during project design and implementation. Identifying examples of positive deviance and working with community members who are well versed in local challenges, available resources, and local capacity presents opportunities for community members to establish project objectives and provides the foundation for future environmental management projects in the area. We present a case study of artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) in the Andes municipality, Antioquia, Colombia and local initiatives to overcome community-identified environmental pollutants. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, surveys, and site visits, we identified community perception of environmental pollutants, management techniques for mining waste, and grassroots initiatives that were locally developed to address them. Through key communication and interaction between innovators with identified positive deviance projects, technical experts, and other miners facing similar challenges, innovative projects that account for the social, political, and economic realities of a developing community can become widespread, leading to improved environmental and social conditions.

Background Students who are the first in their families to attend college are an integral part of undergraduate engineering programs. Growing bodies of research argue that educators could better support these students if they understood the unique backgrounds, experiences, and knowledge they bring with them to higher education. Purpose/Hypothesis The purpose of this article is twofold. First, we identify salient funds of knowledge used by a group of first-generation college students in their educational and work-related experiences. Secondly, we use the funds of knowledge identified in our participants' experiences to create a survey instrument. Design/Method A mixed methods approach was used. Ethnographic interview data of six first-generation college students were used to hypothesize constructs and create survey items. Survey data were collected from 812 students. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to verify the underlying theoretical structures among the survey items and hypothesized constructs. Results Validity evidence supported a 10-factor model as opposed to the hypothesized 6-factor model. The 10 latent constructs that make up the funds of knowledge instrument are as follows: tinkering knowledge from home, tinkering knowledge from work, connecting experiences, networks from family members, networks from college friends, networks from coworkers, networks from neighborhood friends, perspective taking, reading people, and mediating ability. Conclusions Recognizing first-generation college students' funds of knowledge is a first step to creating curricular spaces and experiences that better serve them. A survey scale allows educators to empirically examine how these accumulated bodies of knowledge are transmitted to capital, create advantages in engineering, and provides a useful tool to bridge students' knowledge in the classroom.