EMBRACE initiative brings communities together through research and practice
This summer, the Pérez lab group at Tufts University launched the first iteration of EMBRACE (Empowering Minoritized groups in Biomedical, Robotics, Aerospace, and Civil Engineering), an initiative seeking to connect community knowledge with engineering. Spearheaded by McDonnell Family Assistant Professor Greses Pérez of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the EMBRACE project aims to advance knowledge about what it means to learn engineering in multilingual/multidialectal contexts. It also seeks to engage and inspire students in the Dominican Republic, specifically within Haitian-Dominican communities, through immersive engineering and robotics education while providing opportunities for Tufts undergraduate and graduate students to engage in research practice partnerships.
A team of undergraduate and PhD students traveled to the Dominican Republic with Pérez to conduct the first iteration of the EMBRACE project, marking the start of a meaningful research and educational collaboration between communities on the island and the lab team. During the trip, seven Tufts students along with Pérez — Clara Mabour (PhD in STEM education), G.R. Marvez (PhD in STEM Education and Cognitive Science), and Ymbar Polanco Pino (PhD in Civil Engineering & Environmental Engineering) and undergraduate students Mia Jimenez, A26, (Biology), Sergio Padilla Regules, E27, (Mechanical Engineering), Taisha Pierre, A25 (Engineering Psychology), and Luis Suarez, A26, (Computer Science and Philosophy)— conducted data collection activities to investigate the association between the ways of speaking and knowing in communities and in engineering.
Drawing from their expertise across disciplines, the team also facilitated learning experiences where they introduced concepts in civil engineering, biomedical engineering, robotics, and aerospace engineering through hands-on engineering activities facilitated in both Spanish and Haitian Creole for elementary and middle school students. During the summer, the undergraduate participants prepared for the trip as part of the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO) summer interns program. In collaboration with the partner communities and with the logistical support from educators Koral Nuñez and Martha Paulino, the Tufts team spent several months before the trip designing, preparing, and testing the research design and the learning activities to ensure their educational value and effectiveness. While planning and implementing activities, the group’s central focus was to honor the realities of the people in the participating communities as PhD student Taisha explained, “The kids have their own definitions of engineering and we need to support that and not rewrite it.”
Over two weeks, the EMBRACE team hosted activities at two distinct sites — a local church and a school. During the first week, the team collaborated with a vibrant community in Monte Plata and in the second week with a public school in La Altagracia Province, both located in the eastern part of the Dominican Republic. The team and both communities were eager to engage in engineering, robotics, and multilingual teaching and learning to spark students’ curiosity for technology, engineering, and science. Many students who participated in the engineering activities expressed dreams of becoming scientists and engineers in the future or to use the knowledge acquired to tackle problems in their local context.
Among the highlights of the program were projects that showcased students' growing understanding of engineering principles. The students participated in challenges that included designing model homes resilient to simulated natural disasters, programming autonomous vehicles using LEGO Spike Prime robots to navigate mazes by mimicking human puzzle-solving strategies, learning about human anatomy and robotics through building robotic arms (made with recyclable materials) for a relay race, and learning about aerodynamics through the design and launch of bottle rockets intended to achieve the greatest possible height. At the end of each week, the students and community members gathered for a celebration to honor the participants’ efforts.
The EMBRACE team extends special thanks to those who made this impactful project possible including the local partners and community organizers in the Dominican Republic, the McDonnell Family Foundation, and the Tufts’ Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO).
The trip laid the foundation for future research and educational collaborations between Tufts scholars and communities. Through these efforts, the EMBRACE program strives to expand knowledge about engineering and robotics learning in multilingual/multidialectal and multicultural contexts while affirming and leveraging students’ lived realities to envision an engineering and robotics education that reflects the everyday practice,both cultural and linguistic, of people in their communities. In the long-term, the project works towards building a more inclusive future in engineering and a broader conception of what it means to engineer. It also provided a unique learning experience for the Tufts graduate and undergraduate students, who had a chance to share their engineering experiences with others and engage in research with communities, and for Pérez to further expand notions of what it means to design linguistically inclusive learning spaces in engineering.
As the program continues, the Tufts team hopes to support communities as they run engineering activities themselves. “These communities are doing and have been doing engineering for generations but our narrow conceptions in the disciplines of what it means to engineer and who can be an engineer have limited the recognition that these communities have for what they do,” says Pérez.