Lead Mentor:
2024 Impact Fellows:
Mahir Ashab Enan '27
Ibtihal Gassem '27
Vini Jaiswal '27
Diya Pandey '27
Project Description:
Lehigh University is working with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur on a one-week faculty workshop called the Transformative Education for Sustainable Social Impact (TESSI) Institute that will be offered in January 2024. This workshop will equip ~30 faculty from various Indian institutions with the expertise and tools needed to reshape their courses and curricula to address global grand challenges. The TESSI institute is rooted in the principles of creative inquiry and the praxis of humanitarian engineering and social entrepreneurship with the goal of engaging students in authentic, real-world projects where they co-create sustainable solutions that address the needs of vulnerable populations across the globe.
This GSIF project, new in 2024, is a complementary initiative to TESSI. In the Spring semester, students from Lehigh and IIT Kharagpur will develop the blueprint, detailed curriculum, and operations plan for a dynamic 2-3 week student program called the “Humanitarian Design and Social Enterprise Summer School.” During Summer fieldwork, the team will operationalize this institute with ~40 students from various Indian institutions who will convene on the campus of IIT Kharagpur. The HDSE Summer School is envisioned as a hands-on, hearts-on learning community, an extended hackathon of sorts, where interdisciplinary student teams take radical ownership in their work - learning from each other and from every tool and expert at their disposal - to identify actionable opportunities, design innovative solutions, develop sustainable business models, and effectively convey the stories behind their dream ventures to conventional and social investors.
The HDSE Summer School will aim to foster the next generation of socially conscious changemakers who are equipped to confront the difficult challenges of our time with creativity and resilience. It is designed by student innovators for other student innovators, to inspire them and develop the skill sets and mindsets necessary for driving sustainable social impact through education. All majors are welcome.