Thriving in Fogaraté: Engineering Ingenuity in Haitian-Dominican Communities

Greses Pérez

Engineers, as agents of change, are responsible for safeguarding communities by designing, building and maintaining both natural and built environments –balancing technical expertise with social responsibility. Yet, mainstream understandings of engineering practice often overlook the experiences and contributions of multilingual and multidialectal communities. This project draws on theories from applied linguistics and learning sciences to expand Thriving in Fogaraté, a conceptual model that illustrates how Haitian-Dominicans, despite histories of marginalization and erasure, have cultivated a culture of engineering ingenuity by integrating technical knowledge with community practices across generations. Using a mixed-methods convergent parallel design, this project combines grounded theory and within-group analyses of fieldnotes, participant observations, surveys, and semi-structured interviews with community members. The project examines (a) the engineering-related practices through which Haitian-Dominican communities enact social transformation using their multilingual and multidialectal repertoires; (b) community perceptions linking language practices and cultural understandings to engineering learning; and (c) the features in the bateyes –under-resourced plantation towns– as learning environments, that afford learning opportunities in engineering. This work has implications for research in engineering education, the design of multilingual/multidialectal learning environments and the advancement of educational opportunities for multilingual and multidialectal communities.

About Greses Pérez

Greses Pérez is the McDonnell Family Assistant Professor of Engineering Education at Tufts University, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She also holds secondary appointments in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Education. Her research advances theoretical models and pedagogical approaches for understanding how people learn engineering, with emphasis on the role of community resources –language practices and cultural understandings– in engineering problem-solving, decision-making and technology design. For example, her current research investigates (1) how complex engineering decisions relate to everyday community life in the context of real-world problem solving, and (2) how multilingual and multidialectal audiences shape students' understanding of climate technologies and their creation of tech journalism pieces. She employs qualitative and mixed-methods approaches to conduct transdisciplinary research at the intersection of learning sciences, technology design, and multilingual engineering education. Pérez's work has been published in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, the International Journal of Engineering Education, Educational Psychology Review and the Journal of Latinos and Education. Her work has earned national recognition, including an NSF CAREER award and research collaborations with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. She holds a Ph.D. in Learning Sciences and Technology Design and Science Education from Stanford University; an M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez; an M.A. in Education Policy & Leadership from Southern Methodist University; and a B.S.E. in Civil Engineering from the Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo.