Dr. Anna Bernardo-Bricker is a Senior Instructor in Florida International University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. On this episode, Anna pulls back the curtain on her process for infusing global learning into engineering courses. She shares the challenges she faces balancing global learning, accreditation standards, and technical education, and she honestly assesses her own development as a global learning faculty member. Anna teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on air pollution, air quality, and engineering for global sustainability, as well as two environmental engineering laboratory courses and an online course on indoor air quality. She is passionate about mentoring and inspiring the next generation of engineers and received Mentoring Appreciation Awards from the FIU student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2013 and 2017. She earned a Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering from FIU in 2008, an M.S. in Chemistry from the University of Miami in 1993, and a Licentiate degree in Chemistry from the Universidad Simón Bolívar, Caracas, Venezuela in 1988.
Resources Mentioned
- “Earth from Space,” NOVA documentary
Great Quotes
“There is no timeline for awareness. Sometimes one can see that a person, almost on the facial expression or something that they say or a question that they ask, that one then says, ‘Wow, this is the moment where it's part awareness.’ So I don't think that awareness can be on a timeline or completely disconnected from perspective.”
“[Global] awareness is awareness of self, first, and of one’s position in the world… So the first thing then is to become aware of self and how to teach that to others is a challenge. It is a continuous challenge.”