Designing with Communities
The Humanitarian Engineering Program educates engineers and scientists to work as partners with communities seeking to enhance their social, environmental, and economic sustainability.
Students in the program learn to take a sociotechnical approach to make a difference in the world through their professional careers, whether in community development or corporate settings.
Graduate students and faculty also inform HE education by conducting leading research at the intersection of engineering and social science. To learn how you can become involved in Humanitarian Engineering, please explore our webpages or contact us.
Our Programs
HE has a variety of education, research, outreach, and engagement programs, with two focus areas: Engineering for Sustainable Development and Corporate Social Responsibility.
Educational programs for undergraduates include 18-credit undergraduate minors in each of our two focus areas, Engineering for Community Development (ECD) and Leadership in Social Responsibility (LSR), and a 12-credit Area of Special Interest (ASI) in HE. Undergraduate students can also pick ECD or LSR as a focus area in the BSE degree. Graduate students can enroll in a 9-credit certificate program or a 30-credit Master’s Degree in Humanitarian Engineering and Science. Many undergraduate and graduate students participate in HE research projects. And, all students can take classes in HE or participate in an HE-related project through design classes, student clubs, or the Peace Corps Prep program.
Click below for more information on each of these opportunities.
HE News and Events
Congratulations to the HE Program graduates and all the Mines spring class of 2023 graduates!
Humanitarian Engineering celebrates all our graduates, including new HES grad Mateo Rojas, who was selected as the graduate ceremony student commencement speaker! He managed to keep it a secret from his family, fellow HES students, and friends up until the moment he stepped on stage. He gave a rousing speech about learning from people from different life and disciplinary backgrounds and not forgetting about justice in engineering and business decisions, with a focus on including the people affected by mining in the coming energy transition mineral boom.
You can watch the video here, starting at around 50:00.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT…
For additional HE news and events, please visit our Humanitarian Engineering Media, News & Events page!
Our Impact
- HE@Mines started in 2003 as the first such curricular program in the US and has inspired similar programs at many other schools
- The HE program allocates annual graduate and undergraduate scholarships and has supported more than sixty students in the program since 2014
- Several hundred students each year take nearly twenty different HE-related undergraduate and graduate courses
- Over one hundred and twenty students have graduated with an HE minor since program inception
- The Engineering for Communities Design Studio and the Mines Capstone Senior Design program hosts dozens of HE-related projects each year, giving senior engineering students real-world practice in applying their HE skills
- The graduate program is a vibrant, exciting community of engineers and scholars
- Students carry out numerous HE projects through two student clubs: Mines without Borders and Socially Responsible Scientists and Engineers
Learn More
Are you a new student at Mines? Learn more about Humanitarian Engineering by enrolling in our Humanitarian Engineering Canvas page.
Want to hear some professionals share their experiences with Humanitarian Engineering? Please check out our Humanitarian Engineering and Science colloquium lectures and our Gold Nuggets Humanitarian Engineering interview series!
Need to connect with HE faculty? Please don’t hesitate to reach out to Juan Lucena, Kevin Moore, Julia Roos and Jessica Smith for any of your HE needs.
learn about our projects
Harnessing the power of engineering and social science, we work directly with communities to jointly define problems and create sustainable solutions.
What it’s like in HE@Mines
Student Project
in social Innovation
RESPONSIBLE MINING, RESILIENT COMMUNITIES
Learn more about our partnership with RMRC @ Mines. “We are an interdisciplinary, multi-institution, and global research collaboration funded by the US National Science Foundation. Our goal is to co-design socially responsible and sustainable mining practices with communities, engineers, and social scientists.”
Learn how to work with International Communities
Support the Program
