Alexandre Guéve, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher, Duke University
Feb. 17, 2023
11:00 AM
404 NH Lincoln
160 PKI Omaha
Low-Tech Engineering: heeding students’ call for engineering a more sustainable and socially just society
A worldwide consensus of the scientific community has now confirmed with a high level of certainty that the rich world has been living beyond the planetary boundaries at the expense of the rest of the world. The resulting anthropogenic polycrisis, spanning from climate change to social inequalities, points toward deeply rooted systemic causes. One of them is our relationship with our environment through technology, in which engineers play a crucial role. This motivates my decision to mobilize my research and teaching expertise to empower the next generation of students to address the urgency posed by the climate crisis and be actors of the ecological transition.
In this seminar, through concrete examples, I will lay out the foundations for a pedagogical framework, Low-Tech Engineering, which will achieve this goal. Hinging on the principles of sustainability and social justice, Low-Tech Engineering shifts the focus from technology to its raison d’être: human well-being in accord with the rest of the living world. To answer a growing sentiment of ecoanxiety and powerlessness among students, action-focused teaching is anchored in the problematics of local communities through service learning. This will be exemplified, in the context of Civil and Environmental Engineering, through eco-construction. Since the built environment is the world’s biggest consumer of raw materials and represents 40% of global carbon emission, it is indeed the
number one priority for engineering to address. As a decompartmentalized approach, the tools of Low-Tech Engineering are modular, transversal, and scalable. They can therefore be deployed throughout campus and beyond, to pluralize our response to the unprecedented challenges posed by climate change and widening social inequalities.