Casey Gibson

In the HES M.S. program at Colorado School of Mines, Casey pursued her interests in Spanish and Latin America through RMRC, collaborating with Colombian students, researchers, and community members. Her coursework in Science and Technology Studies, Community-Based Research, Environmental Engineering, and Sustainable Community Development expanded her perspective on engineering's societal impact. Supported by an Edna Bailey Sussman Fund Graduate Research Fellowship, Casey interned at MIT's D-Lab, creating a toolkit to assess mining contamination's effects on food sovereignty in Colombia. 

After graduating in 2022, Casey became an Associate Program Officer at the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in Washington, D.C., contributing to projects focused on cultural, ethical, social, and environmental responsibility in engineering. These include consensus reports on extraordinary impacts of engineering on society, and health disparities due to indoor air quality. She has helped organize a workshop on the health equity implications of extreme heat, particularly on marginalized communities, and helps coordinate activities between the U.S. Academies and the Inter-American Network of Academies of Sciences in Latin America. The knowledge and connections gained through HES have been indispensable in her current role, especially the first-hand experience with community engagement. 

Project Description: 

Under RMRC, Casey developed her thesis titled “Theorizing the ‘Social’ in Sociotechnical, Community-Based Engineering: Incorporating a Rapid Assessment Procedure in Educational and Field-Based Studies on Colombian Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining” (Gibson, 2022). Through this work, Casey conducted a qualitative assessment of the most prevalent environmental risks perceived by community members living and working at the intersection of artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) and agriculture in Andes, Antioquia, Colombia. 

When Casey began her journey at Mines, defining her project scope posed a challenge. Despite her desire to collaborate closely with Colombian ASGM communities to shape her project based on their needs and priorities, COVID-19 restrictions prevented her from traveling to Colombia for a year. Acknowledging the significance of community input, she sought practical solutions for this dilemma. During and prior to her internship with MIT D-Lab, Casey observed virtual Community Capacity Building (CCB) trainings facilitated by D-Lab and C-Innova (Bogotá). These sessions relied on WhatsApp group chats to involve community members in co-design activities. Initially centered around ASGM technologies, the trainings shifted focus towards creating home gardens, chicken coops, and fish tanks, addressing COVID-19-induced food insecurity. This shift sparked Casey's initial interest in exploring the connections between ASGM and food production, or the “ag-mining intersection.” 

At the core of Casey's project was the adaptation, teaching, and application of Rapid Assessment Procedure (RAP), a technique she encountered during her Community-Based Research course. Although commonly utilized in fields like public health, RAP is rarely employed in engineering interventions. This approach allows for a rapid collection of nuanced, qualitative data about communities through ethnographic interviews, observations, site visits, and other methods. Executed by a diverse research team involving community members, RAP was enriched by Casey's integration of Humanitarian Engineering concepts like "contextual listening" and proactive community involvement. Before conducting her fieldwork in Andes and concurrent with her D-Lab internship, Casey formulated a RAP workshop, instructing RMRC undergraduate students in the methodology's application. The results of this workshop were documented in the work by Gibson et al. (2023).