The Mortenson Center combines education, research, and partnerships to improve development tools and practice. We train engineers to recognize the issues at the core of development challenges, and collaborate with partners across the CU-Boulder campus and the world to create sustainable, scalable, evidence-based and multidisciplinary solutions to global development problems. Our program provides multiple pathways for engineers to enter the field of global engineering.

Program Educational Objectives:

The Mortenson Center at the University of Colorado Boulder promotes the role and skills of engineers in identifying and addressing the unequal and unjust distribution of access to basic services such as water, sanitation, energy, food, transportation and shelter, and places an emphasis on identifying the drivers, determinants and solutions favoring equitable access. Through our curriculum, we: 

  1. Introduce students to the historical causes and present conditions of global inequality, and identify the opportunities and limitations of professional engineering engagement. 
  2. Empower students and working professionals to engage in a historically contextualized, anti-imperial contribution to global engineering. 
  3. Identify and promote the relevance and role of the engineering profession in supporting the reduction of poverty and increasing prosperity.