Engineers with a Mission: Religion, Humanitarian Engineers, and a Solar Panel Array in Haiti

• In Event: The Will to Improve, The Vision of Future-Making, and Innovations for Development - I

Abstract

This talk describes how humanitarian engineers’ differing motivations “to improve” affect the kinds of interventions they make. I explore an often ignored aspect of the pedagogy and practice of humanitarian engineering--the diverse moral, ethical, and religious values of the engineers themselves bring to their projects. I contribute to scholarship on visions of future making in development by exploring the relationship between religious values and technological expertise in the education and practices of humanitarian engineers. Using history and ethnography, I describe a network of humanitarian engineers at Baylor University whom I observed plan and implement a solar panel array project in Cap Haïtien, Haiti. I explore the opportunities and limitations of “discipline specific service” at a Baptist university by contextualizing this week-long implementation trip. I use this case to highlight unique features of an explicitly Christian engineering organization but also to explore what are recurrent issues for all humanitarian engineering projects. I ask how institutional values are expressed by individuals and what the search for personal and professional belonging looks like for religious engineers. I refine scholarly conceptions of “the will to improve” by placing this development project within a longer history of engineers trying to solve complex problems with technological solutions. I also provide grounds for comparison between humanitarian engineering conducted in public universities and universities that are explicitly motivated by Christian apologetics. I problematize a singular “will to improve,” asking how a multiplicity of values for participating in humanitarian engineering change development projects’ outcomes.

Author

• Marie Stettler Kleine, Virginia Tech