CEE’s Christian Guzman Receives Lilly Fellowship

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The UMass Amherst Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) has selected Assistant Professor Christian Guzman of the UMass Amherst Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department as one of its eight campus recipients of the 2026-27 Lilly Fellowship for Teaching Excellence. Established in 1986, the Lilly Fellowship supports the university’s strategic mission to develop academic leaders in the area of teaching. 

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Guzman will use his Lilly Fellowship to integrate a joint CEE 473 Groundwater/CEE 660 Subsurface Hydraulics course into his teaching duties and revitalize the coursework with new and innovative content related to socio-hydrological development, societal goals, partnerships with local community organizations, civic engagement, artificial intelligence, and other engineering tools.

According to the CTL, “During their Lilly Fellowship year, participants attend regular seminars on pedagogy, develop a new course or substantially redesign an existing one, complete a teaching portfolio that includes teaching reflections and activities adapted to the course, and work collaboratively to anticipate many of the challenges and rewards of faculty life at UMass Amherst.”

As Guzman explains about the work of his lab that will help him to upgrade CEE 473/CEE 660, “My research focuses on the soil and water resources at various scales within watersheds that contribute food, energy, water, and societal needs. Along with collaborators from a variety of disciplines, I am interested in soil-surface dynamics, surface-water-quality degradation, and socio-hydrological development. I have a special interest in pursuing scholarship with a socio-hydrological perspective that benefits the local community, nation, and the world, including marginalized and underserved communities.”

In that context, Guzman plans to integrate CEE 473/CEE 660 into his teaching duties during the Spring 2027 Semester. In the meantime, he proposes redeveloping the course to teach trailblazing engineering themes from his lab research and reengineering the coursework to introduce “synergistic curriculum options” into the CEE’s new B.S. in Environmental Engineering Degree. 

According to Guzman’s proposal for the Lilly Fellowship, “As previously devised, the course is an opportunity for students to be trained in rigorous mathematical theory related to the transport and movement of water in the subsurface for application in engineering contexts. The topic of groundwater is extremely important for engineers interested in societal resilience and global development.” 

Guzman goes on to say that “In order to connect these concepts to real-world contexts, I would aim to enhance the conventional approach to learning about groundwater by introducing data collection at local field sites, work with a community partner (such as Friends of Lake Warner, Nuestras Raices, or Hampshire County Schools) to respond to community goals, and the introduction of programming and AI tool workshops to fortify students’ recent experiences in their sophomore course: CE-ENGIN 244 Programming for Civil Engineers.”

As Guzman explains the logic of his approach, “In this way, I would seek to help bridge the potential tensions between the civic engagement and artificial-intelligence tools, so that engineers in this course can confidently learn how to problem-solve across a range of settings. I aim to further collaborate with the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies and the Office of Civic Engagement and Service-Learning to ensure further integration with resources on campus.”

In his Lilly proposal, Guzman also expresses his interest in contributing to the dialogue about teaching and its practice on campus through the delivery of workshops and participation in training programs to provide insights on pedagogical approaches gained through the Lilly Fellowship. 

Since its inception, the Lilly Program has trained more than 285 UMass Amherst faculty members, including 33 Distinguished Teaching Award winners, 48 College Outstanding Teaching Award winners, two Manning Award winners, 44 department chairs, 21 associate deans, and two deans.