Multidisciplinary Experiences

For my multidisciplinary experiences, I completed FSE 150 and GPH 314: Global Change. These experiences helped me understand the importance of understanding how different engineering and non-engineering factors come into play when creating a technology. FSE 150 was a great introduction to how issues, such as social, political, and cultural issues influence how a technology is implemented. GPH 314 built off of this by providing more background about climate change, the driving factors, different technologies, and the different political and cultural issues that affect the uptake of different technologies. The GPH 314 class began by explaining how climate change works and basic climate science principles. Then, the class discussed different technologies and their impact on the climate. This was very helpful to my engineering career and my development as a person because I'm less likely to fall for tactics like greenwashing and understand what steps will actually make a difference in sustainability. The class also discussed different policies and the history of United States environmental politics. This was very helpful to me as a person and a voter, especially in times when many politicians aim to scale down or completely remove policies that protect the environment.

 These classes were very helpful to my theme of sustainability because they answered all the questions I had about why existing technologies that could help prevent climate change were not being implemented, such as nuclear and solar. One primary political reason was how different politicians framed renewables, with some sides claiming they accelerated the economy to others claiming they destroyed jobs in industries such as oil and gas. While making incremental progress to make green technologies better is very valuable, these courses taught me that the potentially bigger issue is that cultural and political pressures prevent uptake for technologies that are already ready.