Acara: Education To Address Grand Challenges Sustainably and via Global Cooperation

Educational institutions are uniquely positioned to help addressing Grand Challenges such as clean energy or food security. This presentation will discuss three programs aimed at training and empowering students and international student teams around global Grand Challenge topics. Two programs will be mentioned briefly: (1) Engineers Without Borders and other similar groups, and (2) the Peace Corps Masters International program. The third program will be discussed in more detail: (3) the Acara Challenge, hosted by University of Minnesota. Acara challenges students to identify and test sustainable solutions to Grand Challenges in a less-developed community. Students from universities in higher- and lower-income countries work together to develop and test a Grand Challenge solution. The presentation will discuss how Acara works, strengths and weaknesses of the approach, and what lessons Acara holds for educating students to understand and address global Grand Challenges. We hope that this information will be useful for researchers and educators initiating programs for students to engage in “more than a field trip” –type projects.