Concentration:
Design Engineering 

Community Engagement through Swearer:
Laidlaw Scholar and Swearer Center Student Advisory Committee member

Swearer Center Laidlaw Scholar, Marisol Jimenez '25, has connected her interest in community engagement, an integral part of her high school experience, with her academic pursuits here at Brown. A concentrator in Design Engineering, which encourages students to both understand and develop innovative approaches to societal issues, Jimenez particularly values that the concentration emphasizes why we do things instead of only how we do things, enabling her to balance her technical training work with considerations of the works’ broader impact. 

Through the Laidlaw Scholars Leadership and Research Program at the Swearer Center, Brown undergraduates engage with the strengths of local communities to develop an expansive understanding of leadership and how we might collectively address our most pressing societal challenges. As a Laidlaw Scholar, Jimenez spent last summer conducting research with the Pandemic Journaling Project, a traveling exhibition of images that were curated in collaboration with the Swearer Center, the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, the Population Studies and Training Center, Providence Public Library and the students of ANTH 1515: Anthropology of Mental Health. Jimenez lead a cohort of Latinx students, helping recruit, interview and analyze journal entries. She is still actively working with the cohort throughout the school year and continues to participate in leadership trainings and workshops, speaking to scholars all over the country at a recent conference. 

Jimenez is also a member of the Swearer Center’s Student Advisory Committee (SAC), collaborating with the Swearer Center to offer her perspective and experiences the Center’s decision-making and strategic processes. She continues to tie her academic work into her community engagement goals as president of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, where students are working with local schools, aiming to host an accessible coding workshop.

As Marisol looks forward to studying abroad and continuing to build on her community engagement as a Laidlaw Scholar next semester, she appreciates the value of taking risks, taking risks on yourself, and taking the first steps on your own journey. 

Learn more about upcoming community-engaged scholarship opportunities with the Swearer Center here.