Work in progress - achieving the ABET professional skills using solidarity projects

Traditionally, engineering studies have focused on preparing students technically and given little importance to social or ethical aspects, nor the ability to work in multi-disciplinary teams. Currently though, these skills are an added value and have been included in most prestigious centrepsilas curricula. As a result, they have become a subject of study for the education community and the focus of numerous papers. Correspondingly, the Barcelona School of Informatics has developed a hardly explored initiative in order to inculcate these values and help students acquire these skills. This initiative gets them involved in what we call solidarity projects, where both students and professors get administrative and subsidized support to create cooperative work that will provide a solution to specific problems on developing countries and poor local areas. These projects may be introduced in some courses and during Bachelor and Master Thesis and have contributed towards the professional skills development of both students and professors involved.