Engineering Peace: Youth Innovation in the Workforce

Infuse traditional STEM curriculum with conflict resolution and peacebuiliding skills to prepare young engineers in conflict and post-conflict settings to tackle the world's most pressing challenges. Combine coursework with experiential education opportunities that enable young engineers and entrepreneurs to develop peace engineering solutions in real-world settings.

We seek to bridge the peacebuilding and engineering fields by partnering with academic institutions, student groups, and local peacebuilders in conflict and post-conflict environments to create:

1. Content that builds skills, knowledge, and attitudes in the nascent and growing field of PeaceTech, Peace Engineering, and Peace Entrepreneurship

2. Creative, engaging online education and training toolkits, case studies, and scenarios based on real-world peace engineering challenges that provide young people with opportunities to practice new skills in a “risk-free” learning environment

3. Curated, experiential education opportunities for students and young entrepreneurs to apply their Peace Engineering skills to co-create innovative solutions to real-world challenges in their communities and abroad

Traditional STEM programs are providing young people with the critical technical skills and knowledge, but in order for these young scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians to apply those technical skills to address the pressing global challenges of today, they must have a more interdisciplinary set of skills and knowledge that enable them to consider the social, political, and environmental context, and complex factors at play in conflict and post-conflict environments.

The Peacebuilding Engineers Program was founded on the idea that engineers from all disciplines have valuable know-how and skills that can help rethink and scale existing peacebuilding programming. Simultaneously, the peacebuilding community has expertise in international relations, cross-cultural communications, conflict analysis and other related peacebuilding skills that can bring the engineering student of today into the increasingly interconnected and interdependent global workforce.

Through this program, young engineers and entrepreneurs in conflict and post-conflict environments will have the opportunity to develop a broad array of global skills that integrate their engineering skills and knowledge with the critical social and political understanding needed to work in, and address, the most pressing 21st century global challenges.

Current approaches to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and workforce training are limited in their narrow focus on technical skills. This strict emphasis on “hard” skills prevents STEM students from understanding the complex nature of socio-political and environmental factors that affect the world’s toughest challenges, and is holding them back from taking innovative, integrated, and interdisciplinary approaches to solving these issues. 

The National Academy of Engineers issued a report on “Educating the Engineer of 2020” articulating concern that engineering education was not equipped to prepare students to address the world’s most pressing problems. Market research with global engineering and tech firms, government engineers, and faculty at key engineering schools confirms the need for STEM students of today to broaden their education to include social sciences. This program addresses these concerns, and provides pathways for young engineers to apply their skills for positive social impact.

This solution involves the creation of two peace engineering courses, accompanying interactive scenarios, and an experiential education program.

Through the interactive online courses and scenarios, we aim to reach young engineers and entrepreneurs living in conflict and post-conflict environments. Through the experiential education program we will reach 10 of these students. Experiential education opportunities will not only further build and develop peace engineering skills and anchor learning, it will also develop the student’s portfolio, thereby strengthening their ability to transfer peace engineering skills into a myraid of opportunities in the global workforce.

Creation of two peace engineering online courses and scenarios and establishment of a peace engineering experiential education program. Partnerships with local schools and NGOs providing STEM education and training to disadvantaged youth. - Creation of a robust Peacebuilding Engineers Program that can be further scaled to reach additional STEM students and young entrepreneurs

Completion of all course assessments to a satisfactory level. - Satisfactory completion of two peace engineering courses and accompanying scenarios by 60-100 young engineers or entrepreneurs living in conflict or post-conflict contexts

Successful completion of a peace engineering project will be determined by the peacebuilding partners who have articulated a need. Projects will be curated to suit student/entrepreneur skills, and mentorship will be provided to support the design process. - 10 young engineers or entrepreneurs that have completed the two online courses to a satisfactory level participate in the experiential education program, including successful completion of a peace engineering design project

Instead of focusing solely on providing disadvantaged youth with access to STEM skills or technology tools, this solution empowers STEM students and young entrepreneurs to become innovators in their field, by providing them the necessary skills to succeed in the 21st century workforce. In addition to developing a new set of skills and new ways of thinking about and applying STEM skills, this program provides opportunities to apply their integrated peace engineering skills to real-world challenges, develop their portfolio, and achieve positive impact in a peacebuilding context.

We are leading the field in bridging peacebuilding and engineering in theory and in practice through our multi-disciplinary, cross-sector, and local partnerships. The Peacebuilding Engineers Program was envisioned over several years of collaboration with critical stakeholders in these two fields, including engineering and peacebuilding students and faculty, local peacebuilders, and peacetech entrepreneurs. During the research and piloting phases we have - and will continue to - seek input and feedback, utilizing a truly integrated design process that aims to create engaging, skills-driven, online and offline learning experiences.

The courses will be offered online and will be accessed through an online platform. The experiential educational opportunities will be accessed through engagement with PeaceTech Lab, who will work with a variety of partners in the peacebuilding field and peacetech industry to match students with appropriate applied peace engineering projects.

During the pilot phase we will sustain our program through established university partnerships and foundation grants. As we continuing to grow our solution, we will continue to build-on and expand our university partnerships, licensing our peace engineering courses and scenarios to major colleges and universities who will offer the courses to undergraduate and graduates engineering students, professional engineers seeking continuing education credits, and engineering and technology professionals seeking to advance their skills and knowledge through executive education programs.

Revenue generated from these licensing agreements will enable us to grow our peacebuilding programming by providing low-to-no-cost access to the online courses and scenarios to disadvantaged youth involved in STEM programming. We will network and collaborate with organizations currently working to meet the demand for STEM education among disadvantaged youth populations in conflict and post-conflict environments to continue reaching this population.

Reluctance by STEM programs to incorporate conflict resolution and peacebuilding themes into their course offerings. Inability to generate enough revenue from universities to support funding disadvantaged youth in conflict / post-conflict / peacebuilding contexts.

We are eager to work with the SOLVE community to continue bridging the peacebuilding and engineering fields, creating new and engaging content, and testing the knowledge and learning impact of the courses with STEM students and peacebuilders across the globe.

The PeaceTech Lab Peacebuilding Engineers Program has partnered Drexel University to create the first Peace Engineering MS degree program. We work closely with local peacebuilders, peacebuilding organizations, students and faculty at universities, groups working at the intersection of engineering and peacebuilding.

Unknown - potentially 2 universities developing peace engineering programs.