By Waleed F.
As engineering major, I never expected any class that would even remotely relate to Social Change. My advisor this semester asked me how all my classes are going and I said they are going great, but later she asked what about ENME 467 (Engineering for Social Change), and I replied, “It is probably the most different and interesting kind of class I have taken since I’ve been to college.”
To be honest, I actually did not even know what philanthropy meant before I took this class. For me philanthropy was a concept only thrown around my adults when they are in there fifties where they can actually afford to give generously to charities. As an undergrad in college, I never even thought that I would be exposed to this kind of notion where I would have to make a decision of which organization to choose for to give ten thousand dollars in grant. When we started this class and the professor was explaining us the process of choosing an organization, it seemed straightforward. But the closer we got to our decision, the more complicated and difficult it became. Now that we are left with last two organizations, it is even harder to make a final decision since we will have to live with that decision for the rest of our lives hoping if our 10K grant did anything to create social change in the lives of other people.
Another interesting aspect of this class was the privilege to hear from different speakers that heavily influenced the way I looked at engineering. I always thought that engineering is all about solving problems, but never thought that Engineering is actually to make a positive change in the lives of other so they can live a more meaningful life. Overall, Engineering for Social Change was a class that taught me different aspects of being an engineer that I never had thought before and it made me appreciate even more my choice of choosing engineering as my major.
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