COVID Impact
USD's Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering Response to the Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a great deal of challenges and opportunities on our campus, in our communities and across the globe. At the University of San Diego, our Changemaking engineers and computer scientists are coming together to find solutions to the immediate uncertainties that we are facing today, and working together to make an impact that will positively affect generations to come.
Post-COVID Task Force
USD's Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering has established a Post-COVID Task Force with members drawn from across the school, as well as alumni and external advisors. The Task Force is working together to consider crucially important questions related to the role of engineers and computer scientists in preventing, addressing and mitigating future disasters, such as the pandemic we are currently facing, and how to build this into the future of our education programs.
Mission
Our mission is to discuss the criticality of our current situation — causes, symptoms and strategies — to create engineering and computer science professions which support a new world. The Task Force is developing recommendations and implementing strategies toward engineering and computer science education at USD. This is an opportunity to consider how we embrace our commitments to social and environmental justice, sustainability, peace and positive global and social impact in the light of our new normal and in leading others across the nation and beyond in doing so.
The Task Force, which formed in response to the current pandemic, is an expression of work we believe is urgently needed to address multiple interrelated and critical areas in global society and our environment, such as climate change and racial injustice, and to support students in the development of capabilities for an unknown future.
Primary Areas of Focus
- Identify the socio-environmental technical skills and knowledge that students need to learn to be capable of working within an unknown future and help prevent, address and mitigate disasters such as we are experiencing right now.
- Determine how the development of these capabilities can be facilitated within or across, or as a transformation of, our programs.