Funding - Research Grants
Transformative Educational Experience Grants (2018) - Third TAMUQ-Groningen International workshop on Humanitarian Engineering, Leeuwarden-The Hague, The Netherlands
Grant amount: $20,000
Dr. Hassan Bashir (L-PI), Texas A&M University at Qatar
Dr. Patrick Linke (PI), Texas A&M University at Qatar
Dr. Zohreh Eslami (Co-PI), Texas A&M University at Qatar
Dr. James Rogers (Co-PI), Texas A&M University at Qatar
ABSTRACT
This 1-week experience will allow our students to understand the many complications involved in reconstruction work in post crisis situations. The workshop aims to meet several objectives described in the AAC&U’s publication on High Impact Learning. Most significantly, it will integrate ideas and information from various sources outside of the regular engineering curriculum and will encourage our students to think outside the box which was also observed in the first two editions of this workshop. As well, the workshop will inculcate a sense of civic-social responsibility as it relates to the Engineering profession in general. All assignments and projects during the workshop will be collaborative and team based - this will allow students to develop inter-cultural presentation and collaboration skills. Finally due to its focus on Humanitarian Action the workshop will constitute diversity and global learning as well as service learning. The third workshop will also include a visit to the Philips Innovation Cluster for High Tech Systems in Drachten and the dairy food giant FrieslandCampina in Amersfoort.
Transformative Educational Experience Grants (2017) - Second TAMUQ-Groningen International workshop on Humanitarian Engineering, Groningen, The Netherlands
Grant amount: $10,000
Dr. Hassan Bashir (L-PI), Texas A&M University at Qatar
Dr. Patrick Linke (PI), Texas A&M University at Qatar
Dr. Zohreh Eslami (Co-PI), Texas A&M University at Qatar
Dr. James Rogers (Co-PI), Texas A&M University at Qatar
ABSTRACT
Engineers have a critical role to play in disaster relief and post-disaster reconstruction, providing shelter, water supplies and sanitation. This 1-week summer workshop provided TAMUQ students with an understanding of operations of the global humanitarian aid and relief industry. The core coursework introduced the normative and political dimensions of humanitarianism as they pertain to engineering at large. Lectures covered topics such as the Geopolitics of Humanitarian Action, Humanitarian Information Management and Intelligence, Ethics of Humanitarian Affairs and an Introduction to Information Technologies and Humanitarian Aid. Students were also introduced to core humanitarian and engineering modules surrounding the rapid prototyping for local and global humanitarian initiatives developed at the Peace Informatics Laboratory in Leiden University, Netherlands. At the same time, the students worked with the international class of the NOHA Master’s program and developed inter-cultural presentation and collaboration skills.
Transformative Educational Experience Grants (2016) - First TAMUQ-Groningen International workshop on Humanitarian Engineering, Groningen-The Hague, The Netherlands
Grant amount: $20,000
Dr. Hassan Bashir (L-PI), Texas A&M University at Qatar
Dr. Patrick Linke (PI), Texas A&M University at Qatar
Dr. Trinidad Rico (Co-PI), Texas A&M University at Qatar
Dr. Philip Gray (Co-PI), Texas A&M University at Qatar
ABSTRACT
Grant received for the inaugural international workshop on Humanitarian Engineering under Texas A&M Transformative Education Experience (TEE) grants. The workshop brought together TAMUQ undergraduate students and the Graduate students enrolled in Humanitarian Action Program (MA) at University of Groningen, for one week in the Netherlands. Multidisciplinary student teams underwent a rigorous teaching program and explored the role of engineers in improving the technological quotient of people in humanitarian crisis situations. Almost all students acknowledged that the workshop was an eye opening experience which allowed them to gain both, a new appreciation for the engineering profession and broaden their horizon in terms of employment and specialization possibilities after graduating from TAMUQ.
NPRP Cycle 4 — 2011–2014 Professional Ethics in an Intercivilizational Context: Towards a Joint East-West Approach
Grant amount: $535,000 for three years
Dr. Hassan Bashir (L-PI), Texas A&M University at Qatar
Dr. Eyad Masad (Co-PI), Texas A&M University at Qatar
Dr. Paolo Gardoni (PI), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Dr. Colleen Murphy (PI), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Dr. Charles Ed. Harris (Co-PI), Texas A&M University
ABSTRACT
The starting point for this project is the increased export of western science and technology education to non-western countries. The project have four distinct but overlapping phases. We begin by delineating the broad contours of the emerging milieu created due to the export of western higher education. The focus during this phase is on developmental aspects of western codes of professional ethics and their relevance, as well as utility, in non-western contexts. In the second phase, we concentrate on identifying the differences and similarities between western and non-western standards of morality that are relevant for developing standards for professional ethics. The third phase compare western approaches of moral decision-making, currently part of the ethics curricula in the west, with prevalent non-western approaches and cultural predispositions. In particular we study issues related to professional and individual identity, gender, cross-cultural communication, law and socio-economics. In the final phase, the project explore the possibility of a balanced universal curriculum for professional ethics by juxtaposing local versus global issues and values in context of moral problem solving.
U.S. NSF — Grant “Qatar-U.S. Workshops in Professional Ethics on Engineering Ethics
in a Globalized World”
Grant amount: $50,000 for two workshops
Dr. Hassan Bashir, Texas A&M University at Qatar
Dr. Eyad Masad, Texas A&M University at Qatar
Dr. Colleen Murphy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Dr. Paolo Gardoni, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ABSTRACT
This event is a series of two international workshops on Engineering Ethics held in October 2012 at Texas A&M University at Qatar, and in February-March 2012 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. The workshop attendees, coming from 15 different countries, represent some of the leading academic institutions and professional engineering bodies globally. These scholars draw upon diverse subject expertise to identify and evaluate the challenges involved in developing international ethics standards for engineering and teaching engineering ethics in an international context. The workshop in Doha focused on issues ranging from the general context of globalization, including the internationalization of local contexts and local influences on global processes to challenges in licensure in an international context. The workshop is of great benefit to Qatar due to the massive investment in higher education and the cosmopolitan make up of its skilled population. In addition, the State of Qatar and Qatar Foundation have established several multi-billion dollar joint ventures with international companies, which bring tens of thousands of engineers from all over the globe to practice in Qatar. NSF funding of the workshops itself is proof of the significance of the topic. In addition these workshops have served to strengthen ties between Texas A&M at Qatar and main campus by providing a forum to discuss future collaborations from an interdisciplinary
and interinstitutional perspective.
Texas A&M at Qatar - QFIS Workshop Sponsored by QNRF, Qatar Petroleum, Texas A&M University at Qatar
Grant amount: $90,000
Dr. Hassan Bashir, Texas A&M University at Qatar (L-PI)
Dr. Eyad Masad, Texas A&M University at Qatar (Co-PI)
ABSTRACT
The overarching purpose of this international workshop is to address the wide array of ethical issues that have emerged for engineers and other professionals due to the rise of a global knowledge economy. In recent years, we have witnessed an unprecedented demand for engineers and other science and technology professionals, with advanced degrees, in less developed countries due to the off-shoring of western jobs and projects via globalization. At the same time many less developed regions are competing to integrate into the global knowledge economy. A logical consequence of this situation has been the export of western science and engineering education and training programs to prominent beneficiary countries of globalization in the non-west. It is a reasonable assumption that materials developed with a focus on the needs of students in western (North American and European) universities would lack attention to perspectives suitable for a diverse and predominantly non-western student population (e.g. Education City in Qatar). In fact the experience of teaching engineering ethics to students at Texas A&M at Qatar confirms this suspicion. In this context, then, this workshop bring together scholars and practitioners from diverse national and professional backgrounds to discuss ethical issues emerging due to the inherent symbiotic relationship between the preparation for high-tech professions like engineering and processes and techniques of globalization.