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Social Impact

Engineer for the Common Good

Learning experiences built around social impact broaden your perspective and teach you to identify ways that engineers can make a real difference for others. Be part of something bigger than yourself. 

Practice Your Purpose: Center for Socially Engaged Design (C-SED) | Center for Healthcare and Patient Safety (CHEPS)

My experience allowed me to interact with a wide and diverse group of people who taught me to think outside the box. I learned to appreciate and even seek out different perspectives. 

Nirvan Bhattachryya
Chemical Engineering,
BLUElab, Center for Socially Engaged Design

students meet with Michigan Cancer Center employees

Center for Healthcare and Patient Safety

About

Center for Healthcare and Patient Safety (CHEPS) Website

Talk to a human: cheps-contact@umich.edu | (734) 763-0799

Semesters Offered/Recommended: Year Round

Financial: Paid Experience

CHEPS brings together students from many different backgrounds to join teams collaborating to solve real-world problems in healthcare. Visit our project page for examples of the types of projects students at CHEPS have the opportunity to work on. We hire students of all degree levels and majors, which include but are not limited to: engineering, computer science, pre-med, nursing, public health and informatics. 

Goes Great With

Looking for something to complement your CHEPS experience? Consider one or more of these:

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If CHEPS isn’t quite your style, one of these opportunities may be a better fit.

Resumé Builders

Experiential education in healthcare and patient safety can give you great resumé points and memorable interview material.

Most projects include:  

  • Collaborate in multidisciplinary teams to tackle real-world problems
  • Work with doctors and observe a healthcare system from the inside
  • Analyze data, write code, and build models
  • Learn how systems engineering applies to healthcare

female student stacks colored blocks

Center for Socially Engaged Design

About

Center for Socially Engaged Design (C-SED) Website

Talk to a human: c-sed-info@umich.edu  | (734) 764-5298

Semesters Offered/Recommended: Year Round

Financial: No Extra Fees, Funding Available, Paid Experience 

The Center for Socially Engaged Design empowers students and practitioners with perspectives and skills needed to design effective, socially conscious technology interventions. We believe this requires designers to take into account the fullest social, cultural, economic, and environmental contexts of their design process and to analyze how their own biases shape their approach. 

Goes Great With

Looking for something to complement your C-SED experience? Consider one or more of these:

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If C-SED isn’t quite your style, one of these opportunities may be a better fit.

Resumé Builders

Experiential education in socially engaged design can give you great resumé points and memorable interview material.

Project: Design Research Field Intern, Nido de Vida, La Bolivarense, Ecuador

  • Practice socially-engaged design methods with an interdisciplinary student team, Ecuadorian organization Nido de Vida and the community of La Bolivarense, to develop a shared understanding of complex challenges and community assets leading to key insights that inform community decision making
  • Develop interview protocols, observation protocols, and other design research methods with partner organization and community members through social identity lens
  • Co-lead 53 interviews and apply front-end design methods to produce, synthesize, and prioritize a database of community challenges, perspectives, values, goals, and resources leading to first-of-its-kind data on community needs now being used for advocacy with elected officials
  • Co-present process, findings, and recommended next steps with student team to an audience of Nido de Vida partners and community members in La Bolivarense