CEE’s Christian Guzman Dedicates His Career to Community-Engaged Engineering 

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According to a thought-provoking article posted by the UMass Amherst Institute of Diversity Sciences (IDS), Assistant Professor Christian Guzman of the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department owes much of his engineering method to an experience as a graduate student at Cornell University when he had a “life-changing opportunity to work in Ethiopia studying soil erosion and water degradation.” See https://www.umass.edu/diversitysciences/news/florida-flood-maps-dr-christian-guzmans-journey-advancing-environmental-justice-massachusetts. 

As Guzman told IDS about his time in Ethiopia, “Everything was upside down from the perspective of what I thought I could help with. The engineering solutions that I thought could change people’s lives had already been tested out. There was more of a need to better integrate researchers and engineers into the community, better work with social scientists, and see how solutions could be a long-term thing rather than a short-term fix.” 

That life-altering revelation of communicating with the people can be summed up by the evocative term “community-engaged engineering.” 

In short, as the IDS said about Guzman, “He learned that the best engineering comes, not from offering people one-way answers, but listening to their needs and engaging in collaborative problem-solving.”  

According to the IDS, “This understanding of community-engaged engineering defines Dr. Guzman’s work today…He leads innovative research that addresses environmental and social inequities – work that has been funded by the IDS. In Dr. Guzman’s IDS research project, he and his team are using geospatial mapping techniques to identify communities in Massachusetts that are most vulnerable to flooding.”  

Dr. Cielo Sharkus (CEE graduate 2024) developed and advanced this work as part of her doctoral research, collaborating with UMass Amherst faculty members Eve Vogel and Christine Hatch, as well as Seda Şalap-Ayça from Brown University.  

IDS reported how Guzman’s team is finding that “Low-income and minoritized communities are disproportionately at risk for flooding events and least equipped to bounce back from them. According to this team, a flood’s consequences for a community depend, not only on its geography, but on socioeconomic status and other features of its demographics.” 

That project epitomizes all of Guzman’s community-engaged projects. Hence, the IDS explained that, for Guzman, what matters is clear: “using his expertise to empower communities and prepare them for the challenges of climate change. And, as he looks to the future, his work serves as a reminder that the best solutions are built, not just on data and models, but on collaboration and engagement with communities to ensure social impact.”  

In that context, Guzman heads the CEE’s Watershed Hydrology Research group, which, as he has explained, studies “the intersections between soil, water, and communities. This research involves investigations on sediment transport, food systems and poverty reduction, mountainous hydrology, soil-nutrient and water-use efficiency, and erosion-risk assessments.” 

Guzman also said that “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.” 

As Guzman summarized his research and teaching philosophy to the IDS, “Engineering isn’t just about the technical stuff, it’s about working with people to make a real difference in their lives.” 

The IDS website said that its mission is “to advance STEM research that tackles complex societal problems, to show how inequality affects health, learning, work, and the environment.”