ABSTRACT
Global awareness helps students to understand and appreciate personal and social context. To help students become more aware, expose them to contemporary issues that society is dealing with. Community service projects are an excellent way for students to learn about contemporary issues, as well as use the engineering design process to problem solve. Intrapersonal environmental factors play a role in determining the student’s response to experiences and interactions. Whether gathering canned foods for the local pantry, educating others about the opioid epidemic, raising money for kids with cancer, or trying to create practical solutions for farming in third-world countries, students will gain an awareness of the people in these situations and develop empathy. Helping students to understand how they can help not only makes them aware of the problem, but it also makes them aware of what can be done about it.
