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Six students and a faculty member from the George Mason College of Engineering and Computing represented the university at the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions (LACCEI) International Multi-Conference for Engineering, Education, and Technology in Mexico City in July.
Christopher Carr, associate dean for Outreach, Student Success, and Engagement and Deputy Title IX Coordinator, co-chaired the LACCEI Alliances Roundtable, with leaders from HBCU’s and other minority-serving institutions.
The students included Cheyenne Bajani, Dominique Calder, Marco Flores, Elias Gonzalez, Andres Guzman, and Camila Lightfoot. They welcomed the opportunity to be exposed to research ideas and collaborators from around the world. The conference offered sessions on humanitarian engineering, sustainability, and artificial intelligence.
Gonzales, a mechanical engineering student, is a recent transfer from Northern Virginia Community College and participates in the university’s RISE Program, which connects transfers to undergraduate research opportunities. “There were opportunities to connect with universities in Latin America and their initiatives and projects, such as a group training people to administer vaccinations. I learned so much about the understanding of social issues in designing projects.”
Learning about research projects at the conference–and from his own George Mason peers, who he got to know on the trip–made him think more deeply about his own projects. He said, “I had plans to graduate and go to work, but now that I had this taste of research, I might want to keep doing it! I really enjoyed it. And I know we have a robotics PhD at George Mason now.”
Calder, a PhD student who juggles a job at Google with her studies, said she is embedded in computer science culture and the event gave her a chance to get to know people from other disciplines. “What I liked is, I’m meeting mechanical engineers and people doing heat transfers. And I liked that the conference was about the human focus of engineering.”
She also welcomed the new perspectives she gained. “It was engineering but with a human focus. We have these technologies we create, but we haven’t always thought about the humanitarian impact of them. It allowed me to open a lens to problems outside the U.S.”
“This was a tremendous opportunity for our students to engage with the global engineering community and envision their limitless potential,” said Carr. “These international experiences are essential investments as our graduates prepare to compete in a global workforce that demands cultural fluency and cross-border collaboration. The connections formed through programs like LACCEI inspire students to see beyond any boundaries they may have set for themselves. When students discover they can go farther than they ever imagined, that's the true return on investment in global experiential learning.”
LACCEI is a non-profit organization of Latin American and Caribbean institutions that offer academic programs in engineering and technology. Its mission is to facilitate and promote global collaboration in the advancement and continuous improvement of engineering and technology education, practice, research, and innovation linking Latin America and the Caribbean to the rest of the world.