Engineering to help

A growing number of U.S. universities offer classes, initiatives, programs, or degrees in engineering and sustainable development, community service, service learning, and/or humanitarian engineering. (To name just a few, in the United States [19], [20], [32], [33], [44], [53], [54].) Similar programs are also burgeoning in Australia, Canada, Europe, and elite universities in Latin America. Although these programs are conducted under a number of auspices and with varying objectives, they share one thing in common: an expressed desire to "help" communities "in need." Such programs generally hold as objectives the performance of some needed service and learning via reflection by those performing the service. To be inclusive, we refer to this diversity of programs under the umbrella term "engineering to help" (ETH).